Nantucket Island
Massachusetts
Relief of Nantucket, sculpted in maple and held within translucent resin. The wood traces the island’s subtle inland elevations and sand-formed terrain. Resin defines nearshore shoals, sandbars, and tidal shallows around the island.
Shaping of Place
Nantucket took shape near the end of the last glaciation, formed from sand, gravel, and sediment left behind as ice retreated from southern New England. Its low relief gives the island a different kind of presence: subtle inland rises, broad outwash plains, and a shoreline continually worked by wind, tide, and migrating sand.
The defining geography extends beyond the dry land. Around Nantucket, shoals, channels, and shallow banks make the island part of a larger Atlantic system. Rotary tidal currents around the Nantucket Shoals help keep that edge in motion, shifting sandbars and bathymetric forms through time.
Nantucket relief, full composition.
Nearshore shoals beneath translucent resin.
Installed relief, angled view.
Nantucket called for restraint. The island sits low and subtle, shaped more by shifting sand than elevation, so the relief needed to come through surrounding depth.
Water became the organizing presence of the piece. Sandbars, tidal channels, and nearshore bathymetry carry the larger story of the forces that continue shaping the island’s edge.
This piece became the first full expression of a resin process developed over years. In that material, depth and movement remain present while the surface stays quiet.
Artist's Note