Interview The Siren of Saltery Bay
Interview and Photos by Neil McDaniel Diver, artist and industry stalwart, Simon Morris, recalls the mermaid of his creation
and a brand new undersea bronze sculpture coming soon to the Cayman Islands
Morris and muse at Saltery
Bay, BC. Opposite: Guardian of the Reef will be installed
underwater at Grand Cayman Island this fall. Another casting of the mermaid,
called Amphitrite, has been a Cayman attraction for years
T he Emerald Princess is always at
home just 50 feet (15m) below the surface near Saltery Bay, on the south coast of British Columbia. With head
arched skyward and left hand reaching out in invitation, this siren of the sea has welcomed thousands of divers to her watery realm for more than two decades. On the action-packed sinking day in March 1989, I was there shooting video for BCTV News Morris and his
as sculptor Simon team marshalled a host of
volunteer divers who helped this mythic lady of the deep into her water world. On a stunningly beautiful winter’s day 24 years later I dived to the mermaid with Simon, and while she is now covered with an ever-changing patina of marine life, she looked as lovely as ever. Recognizing that over two decades later divers
may not know how the Emerald Princess came into being, DIVER asked Simon to tell the story.
DIVER: Simon, first tell us about your diving career.
SM: I’ve worked in the diving industry most of my life, from dive store employee in my teens, to several local and major international manufacturers, including Brooks, Rowands, Whites, FitzWright/Bare, and Scubapro, before starting Cetatek Products Inc., with my two partners, to manufacture the new aquabionic warp1 fins.
54 Magazine
DIVER:When and how did your interest in art, and in particular, sculpting evolve?
SM: My dad and sister are great oil and watercolour artists. When I was a kid my dad tried to teach me how to paint, but I soon realised that I visualize in 3D. My dad bought an oxy-acetylene torch when I was 12 and I was soon carving up chunks of metal to make abstract art. The immediacy of the medium and the 3D nature of it suited me better than painting or sketching.
DIVER:How did the idea for a submerged work of art come about? When? And who was involved?
SM: Well-known dive instructor, Jim Willoughby, conceived the mermaid idea. He ran the diving operations at Beach Gardens Resort in Powell River and realized they needed something iconic to boost dive tourism. They hired another sculptor to carve one out of limestone to be unveiled at EXPO ’86, but it was destroyed accidentally during transportation. During an overly long night in the beer garden, Jim and I hatched a plan to create a bronze mermaid. I actually had no idea how bronze sculpture was made. I just figured I could learn as I went. It was my idea to give her a cetacean tail in
homage to the great cetacean populations in BC. After a couple of quick clay sketches, we decided on the pose, which is designed to look
as if she is sculling with her right hand to hover in the water, while raising her left hand in a combination of surprise at seeing a diver and a welcoming gesture. We decided she needed to be nine feet (2.7m) tall, but my studio had just eight-foot (2.4m) ceilings, so I created a half-scale original. Once at the foundry we built a large pantograph, which is a machine that can ‘point up’ one object to an identical, larger one. Using this device we constructed a heavy steel skeletal armature, built up gross anatomy with plaster of Paris and sculpted the fine features with plastering clay.
DIVER:Describe the process of making a bronze sculpture.
SM: The art of lost wax casting is millennia old, and involves making a mould of an original work, then removing the mould from the original and coating the inside with wax. The ‘waxes’ are then removed from the mould, repeatedly immersed in a liquid ceramic slurry and dried until a strong ceramic shell has been built up. This is fired in a kiln, making it very strong and heat resistant. During the firing, the wax melts out, or is ‘lost’, creating a void in the ceramic shell that looks the same as the sculpture. Molten bronze is poured into this void, and when cooled, the ceramic shell is air hammered off. The sculpture is often cast in pieces, so must be cleaned up, then welded together. Next, it is sand-blasted and given
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