My most recent work, Aurelia, is a solo exhibition of bronze sculpture based on natural science studies. The term aurelia means chrysalis and the origin of the word is Latin for gold. The word refers to the golden color a chrysalis may attain just before the butterfly emerges. In my sculpture titled Aurelia, I wanted to describe this violent, beautiful moment of transition.

Natural science studies became the inspiration for my sculpture when I was a resident artist at the Humboldt Institute in Maine. While exploring the environment in the company of botanists, I used their magnifying scopes to closely examine the forms and structures of small natural specimens. I began combining the study of natural science with my life-long interest in the Greco-Roman tradition of perfected form. Oceanid, a seven-and-a-half-foot-tall bronze sculpture, uses the Greco-Roman proportions of the Winged Victory of Samothrace as it’s skeleton in combination with the forms of spiraled shells, manta rays, waves and wind. By joining the grand proportions found in classical sculpture with information gleaned from the study of the natural sciences, I hope to communicate the sense of amazement I experience in studying the natural world.

Shane Stratton, 2009

A member of the sculpture faculty at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Aurelia is Stratton’s third solo exhibition at Gross McCleaf Gallery. Stratton casts and finishes his work in a private foundry in Philadelphia.