3rd Place, Professional Original

The overhead photo of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, with its marbleized pattern of oil spreading over the surface of the water, fascinated and horrified me. I have been trying to capture that movement with stitching for a long time, and considered the relationship of those warm, red and yellow colors to other natural phenomena like solar flares and flowing lava. I used a pattern of Florentine stitches to represent the lava and repurposed the wave pattern from Walking the Water’s Edge in deep blues for the ocean where Hawaiian lava often ends up. Five colors of wrapped pearl cotton mimic the texture of pahoehoe lava.