-Sharky-Go-Round/Ghost Shark-
by: Kirk McNeill from Santa Cruz, CA 

Artist description from iBurn:

Art is a not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it. -Berthold Brecht

This concept drives my creative process.

The goal of this piece is to raise the awareness of the human population to the devastation being wrought by our species on the oceans, which give life to our planet.

The piece will rotate on a central bearing when it is actuated by human interaction. A gentle push will cause the rotation to simulate the movement of a school of sharks, swimming lazily in a rising spiral current. My goal is to underline the contrast of the beauty of schooling sharks in their ocean community, and the wasteful horror of shark finning by the human community.

From a distance, the low profile of the turntable will show the school, to draw the playa community closer until the view is of the small cloud of sharks from below. Here will be placed the Ghost Shark on its back, as if lying finned and dead on the bottom in stark contrast to the live animals swimming above.