{"id":19444,"date":"2021-12-07T15:26:34","date_gmt":"2021-12-07T20:26:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.world.dan.org\/?post_type=dan_alert_diver&p=19444"},"modified":"2023-06-06T17:20:50","modified_gmt":"2023-06-06T21:20:50","slug":"gar-waterman-the-sea-slug-sculptor","status":"publish","type":"dan_alert_diver","link":"https:\/\/world.dan.org\/fr\/alert-diver\/article\/gar-waterman-the-sea-slug-sculptor\/","title":{"rendered":"Gar Waterman : le sculpteur de limaces de mer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ville d'origine :<\/strong> New Haven, Connecticut<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ann\u00e9es de plong\u00e9e :<\/strong> 56 (J'ai plong\u00e9 pour la premi\u00e8re fois \u00e0 l'\u00e2ge de 9 ans \u00e0 Tahiti).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Destination de plong\u00e9e pr\u00e9f\u00e9r\u00e9e :<\/strong> Probably the Revillagigedo Islands. I had a memorable dive there with my dad for the Discovery Channel special in 1990 \u2014 giant mantas and crystal-clear water with driving clouds of volcanic ash and the extraordinary topography. I hope to get back there someday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pourquoi je suis membre de DAN :<\/strong> Should anything go wrong while diving in remote locations, getting help can be a huge challenge. DAN gives you a worldwide network to identify the closest and best help as quickly as possible. Bent in the Banda Sea off Irian Jaya? If anyone can help you there, it\u2019s going to be DAN.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"sculpteur<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Connus pour leurs couleurs, leurs motifs et leurs formes frappantes, les nudibranches se trouvent dans les mers du monde entier. Ces mollusques marins \u00e0 corps mou, souvent appel\u00e9s limaces de mer, sont les sujets pr\u00e9f\u00e9r\u00e9s des photographes sous-marins. Ils ont \u00e9galement captiv\u00e9 l'imagination du sculpteur Gar Waterman, fils du l\u00e9gendaire cin\u00e9aste Stan Waterman. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gar\u2019s fascination with sea slugs extends beyond his aesthetic appreciation for their unique, organic form. Because most of them have a life span of less than a year and adapt rapidly to changes in their environment, scientists have found them to be an \u201cindicator species\u201d \u2014 an organism whose presence, absence or abundance reflects a specific environmental condition. In this case, nudibranchs are helping researchers understand the impact of global warming on ocean health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Avec chaque nudibranche qu'il a taill\u00e9, cisel\u00e9 et poli dans la pierre, Waterman esp\u00e8re communiquer leur beaut\u00e9 excentrique et leur r\u00f4le scientifique. Pour les cr\u00e9er, le sculpteur de New Haven, dans le Connecticut, s'appuie sur les images prises par des photographes sous-marins et sur les souvenirs qu'il a gard\u00e9s des exp\u00e9ditions de plong\u00e9e qu'il effectuait avec son p\u00e8re.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Une ann\u00e9e magique<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Waterman grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, and spent idyllic summers in Maine, but in 1965, when he was 9, his father moved the family to Tahiti and documented the adventure for National Geographic. It was the younger Waterman\u2019s first experience diving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Le
Le jeune Gar sur le terrain avec son p\u00e8re, Stan<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAt the time, I was just following what we were told to do,\u201d Waterman recalled. \u201cYou don\u2019t have much perspective at 9 years old. We were going to someplace in the South Pacific and had some knowledge that this was unusual \u2014 we left school and our routines. This work was what the old man did, and we were going. Of course, it couldn\u2019t be anything but an extraordinary year for all of us. I remember so many different pieces of it so clearly, while the years before and after are a blur. I was not cognizant at the time how privileged I was to have that experience, but it established a visual vocabulary for me and was the beginning of my love for all things underwater.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years Waterman joined his father on other expeditions, but it was his year in French Polynesia that would inform and inspire his work. \u201cThat year was a foundation in terms of imagery long before I realized I would spend my life as a sculptor,\u201d he said. \u201cI am still drawing on that visual database for my work today.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Le c\u0153ur de pierre<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

When Waterman was 10, his family returned to the United States; he eventually earned a bachelor\u2019s degree in French from Dartmouth College.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy drift toward art and science has evolved over my lifetime, similar to how I became a sculptor,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was not a conscious decision. It was a brief bit of self-reflection where I realized I was happiest when I was making things. Everything pointed in that direction.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following his college graduation though, Waterman was admittedly adrift. \u201cI spent a summer in Maine, and then fall came around, and I didn\u2019t have a clue as to what I\u2019d do,\u201d he said. \u201cI struggled into a routine and did some work in film with my brother and dad. I was just a grunt, and there was always something voyeuristic about it that lacked actual engagement \u2014 you come in with your camera, get the best of whatever you\u2019re there for, and then you leave.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Waterman set up a small studio in a friend\u2019s garage in Princeton and began tinkering. At this point he made a pivotal decision in terms of becoming a working artist. \u201cI met a sculptor who was a friend of my college roommate, and he told me about Pietrasanta, Italy, and said you could learn to carve stone there,\u201d Waterman said. \u201cI had some money from my film work, so I decided to go. It ended up being one of the best decisions I ever made. I was just one of many would-be sculptors \u2014 old and young, famous and unknown \u2014 who were there because of the stone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI ended up going back and forth for seven years. I would sell enough sculptures when I came home to make enough to go back, and without ever reaching some epiphany that I was going to be an artist, that\u2019s what I became.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Sculpture
Sculpture de calmar de Humboldt<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

La s\u00e9rie des limaces de mer<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Though Waterman hasn\u2019t dived in many years, the influence of his year in French Polynesia and on other expeditions is unmistakable in his nudibranch sculptures and ones he\u2019s created of shells, fish and other marine life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWorking with my father, we were typically looking for the bigger creatures for his film,\u201d Waterman said, \u201cbut I loved settling down on the bottom when I could and looking closely at the reef to see what was there. I\u2019ve always loved spotting some of the tinier creatures \u2014 shrimps, nudibranchs and the like. As I evolved into creating this series of slug sculptures, I realized there could be a way to add an environmental inflection to the work and bring some relevance into it beyond just creating fine art objects.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The nudibranchs have been the stars of past exhibits, including the recent \u201cA Slug\u2019s Life: Facing the Climate Endgame\u201d at the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk, Connecticut.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He hopes the sculptures not only raise awareness but also \u201cpromote some kind of actual engagement in the process of trying to preserve the natural world and all these little \u2018beasties\u2019 that are likely to be lost to ocean acidification,\u201d he said. \u201cIt can be a challenge to make a positive presentation because if you\u2019re all doom and gloom, people turn off. You\u2019ve got to capture their attention without actually saying, \u2018These creatures are probably all going to die because of what we are doing to the environment.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art inspired by nature is the oldest art movement around, and I feel strongly that my work forms a part of that continuum. Any nature-inspired artist today should be trying to find some way to have their work join the rest of the voices out there making a case for greater environmental awareness, otherwise their subject matter may well be gone before they realize it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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En savoir plus<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Visit Gar Waterman\u2019s studio in this video.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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