Independence
Traditional Green Patina
Cast bronze sculpture of a newly hatched green sea turtle on the beach

During the summer of 2008 I had an opportunity to visit the country of Costa Rica with a group of students/teachers through Miami University’s Green Teacher Workshop.  While there we spent two nights at a location in the northeast of the country called Tortuguero or “place of the turtles”.  One dark and stormy night, and it really was very dark and very stormy,  we lay on the exposed beach of Tortuguero in a driving rain with bolt after bolt of lightning and chest throbbing thunder playing about us. It was on this beach, revealed in stark strobes of light which alternately revealed the beach in stark detail and an opaque blackness where we watched turtle after turtle come ashore, struggle up the beach, dig a nest,  lay a clutch of eggs and return to the ocean.   These were green sea turtles, 22,500 of which will repeat what I had witnessed each summer on this one beach.  Green sea turtles are one of several different species of turtle that nest on this beach and one of only about  seven sea turtle species in all the oceans.  The worlds other turtle species include the Hawksbill, Olive Ridley, Kemp’s Ridley, Loggerhead, Flatback and Leatherback. 

It was this experience that inspired me to sculpt the Hatchling, Independence, Green  and the mass hatching entitled March to the Sea.

Independence  is made from solid cast bronze.  It weighs about ½ of a pound and is 4” x 3” x 1” in size.  This is an open edition piece. 

It is a sculpture of a baby green sea turtle having emerged from its egg moving as fast as its little flippers can move down to the ocean where for all of its hopefully long life it will remain in the sea, except for the females which will return to this beach on some dark night to lay their clutches of eggs.