This exquisite creature has been near the top of my list of things I wanted to create for a very long time. The lionfish's bright vivid colors, showy fins, and compelling markings make it one of the most visually striking fish in the ocean. I just needed the right opportunity.

And one came along in the form of a juried show at the Museum of Life and Science here in Durham, NC called 30 x 30, which was a show to bring awareness to a campaign supported by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums to protect 30% of earth's land, water, and oceans by 2030. Creating lionfish art for a conservation show felt perfect since lionfish are actually an invasive species in Atlantic waters, so there's a whole conversation baked into the subject.

The design of this fish was pretty straightforward as far as the pieces of metal were concerned. I have done hundreds of fish before this one. But where the real challenge and fun came in was recreating the lionfish's intricate colorful patterns in stainless steel. The colors on a real lionfish are astonishing: bold red and white stripes, touches of brown and gold, all layered in these ornate bands across the body and through those dramatic fan-like fins.

To capture those lionfish colors in metal, I had to work through the heat patina spectrum in order. I started with the hottest color, blue, and colored the whole fish blue first. Then I ground away everything but the blue and colored the next hottest color, purple, then ground the areas that would become golden stripes, recolored those, and finally came in with the natural silver color of the stainless for the lighter bands. This was a very tedious project with many days of hand grinding with my tiny pencil grinder. It was fun to match the stripes from the face through the eye and lip, getting everything to line up across separate pieces of metal.

And once this piece was done I had the very rare experience of being immediately proud of the final product!

This lionfish sculpture is wall hanging, made entirely of stainless steel, colored using only heat patinas, and is safe to be kept outdoors!