Ver. 1 (on the left), Ver. 2 (on the right)
The sketches for the unfinished work Crustaceanity were created in early 2021, as a result of the start of my obsession with incorporating animals into my work. After creating Kytky a Krevety for my finals in high school, and learning how to draw a very distinct style of shrimp, I included that idea everywhere I could think of. Pre-shrimp, my obsession was with blue footed boobies, and the post-shrimp era has been filled with tigers.
Prior to the creation of Crustaceanity my shrimp works were filled with naturalistic elements; plants, blooms, eyes, nudes and more, all intermixed with shrimp. The inspiration for all of this came from nature in its purest form, and the comparison between nature under the sea, and nature above the sea.
As I became more and more obsessed with the shrimp art, I had the frankly genius idea to show myself off as the patron saint of shrimp and crustacean kind.
(Did you know barnacles are considered crustaceans?)
With this in mind, I pursued an image based off of traditional christian artwork to showcase me and my shrimp angels along with other ocean-based motifs based off of old ocean mosaics. For that reason, I believe my sketches can be considered “religious art”.
On Wikipedia, the general definition of “religious art” is “artistic imagery using religious inspiration and motifs and is often intended to uplift the mind to the spiritual (“Religious art,” 2022).”
In Crustaceanity my religious inspiration is from the Bible and Christianity, as well as my own “religious” ideas of myself as crustacean Jesus and my crustacean “children” (just as humans are the Christian God’s lambs and fish). Motifs such as wings and halos and the throne demonstrate common ways to show heaven, and the coral and rocks are an attempt to show the variable nature of the ocean and all there is in it. Lastly, the sketches were created in an attempt to “uplift the mind to the spiritual” even though for me the meaning of “spiritual” has changed from “embracing religion and God” to “shrimp are cool and funny and that should be enlightening; this was a great idea and fun to copy haha now become a part of my silly shrimp religion”.
Kytky a Krevety and Fish Catalogue mosaic (Pompeii, 100BC)
Portrait of Pope Pius IX (George Healy, 1871), St. Peter between Cardinals, and the Altarpiece of Vyssi Brod
Religious art, 2022. Wikipedia.
Available At: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_art
(Accessed: Feb. 26, 2023)
