See the Maritime Masterpieces at the
Tybee Island Marine Science Center
Tybee Island Marine Science Center adorned with four new murals dedicated to the island’s unique ecology
Committed to the environmental stewardship of coastal Georgia, the Tybee Island Marine Science Center has been protecting local marine life and educating the public through informative and interactive programming since 1990. The center is a community treasure where curiosity, conservation and creativity collide, and this fact is made brilliantly apparent by the installation of four new murals within the center’s ground-floor workshop space.
A joint effort by artists and longtime collaborators Polly Cooper and Joy Davis, the murals depict the distinct natural environments that Tybee is fortunate to have — the marshes, the maritime forest, the beach and dunes, and Gray’s Reef — each mural artfully incorporating the various flora and fauna that inhabit them, as well.
Cooper has called Tybee home since the ‘50s, whereas Davis was a transplant who found her way to the island after college, landing a job as a marine scientist with the center. Shortly thereafter, the two crossed paths and Cooper swiftly took the then-recent grad and budding artist under her wing, helping her advance her artistry and build her business acumen. Together, the artists have worked on numerous projects throughout the years, making pottery and other works in partnership. About five years ago, the two took a trip to visit another artist, Angelica Pozzo, in Cleveland, Ohio, who would help them expand their artistic horizons.
“We learned how to do public tile mosaic murals from [her] and she put us on this path of commercial art,” said Davis.
Having studied with an expert in this particular medium, Cooper and Polly took that valuable interaction and applied it to their subsequent works, with the most recent artworks being the marine science center murals.
Each of the four murals feature a precise arrangement of 50 handpainted clay tiles, fired twice in the kiln at upwards of 2200 degrees Fahrenheit for durability. The tiles create stunning mosaics that are both painterly and playful but also serious and scientific — an artful amalgamation of Coopers’ and Davis’ and signature styles, respectively. The mosaics are encapsulated by a tabby border filled with sharks’ teeth, oyster shells and fossils. Each mural teems with life, from the smallest bacteria, plant matter and insects to avians, mammals and all sorts of sea creatures. Across the murals, viewers will spot terrapin turtles, gopher tortoises, raccoons, horseshoe and fiddler crabs, egrets, and even subtle life indicators like skate egg casings and deer footprints.
“We wanted to get deep,” said Davis. “We wanted the forefront, the midground and the background all to be a different experience. The closer you get, the more you see, and the longer you look, the more you see.”
The murals were inspired by a watercolor cross-section that the Department of Natural Resources released about a decade ago.
“We always thought that it was a graphic we wanted to copy because in the cross-section, it’s so amazing because you get to see into the soil and most of the ecosystem community starts in the soil,” said Davis, who showed the cross-section to the center’s Executive Director Chantal Audran.
With that cross-section in mind, Davis found the perfect opportunity to draw upon it after Audran went to see another one of her and Cooper’s murals at Isle of Hope Elementary sometime last year.
“She looked at it and said, ‘we have to have one of those!’” Davis recalled. “This is actually where we can make our cross-section graphic of the habitats of coastal Georgia.”
With this project, Davis was enthused to be able to apply her knowledge from her work at the center into the murals.
“Their whole curriculum, everything that I was taught to observe out in the field, I got to put in [the murals],” she said. “It’s a wonderful honorary showing of what I’ve learned from the science center.”
From start to finish, the murals took about eight months, and 200 tiles, to complete. The murals were officially installed on May 18 of this year. Both artists said they enjoyed the entire process from conception to completion.
“We have to go out sometimes in boats and collect sharks’ teeth,” said Cooper, noting the quiet, zen moments that unfurled along the way.
“I get really lost in love when I know an animal so well,” said Davis. “I get to make all of the little bumps on it and I really start to advertise its structure because my favorite thing . . . is form from function — the physiology of animals.”
Cooper said that they “create to educate’ and that slogan is at the heart of these installations.
“See the details that you would pass by, appreciate those details, those animals that we don’t even know,” said Davis. “Cultivate curiosity to connect to your local nature. A lot of them are dying out and we don’t like that. To realize the symbiotic relationships between a lot of these animals is really important. To take one thing away from the ecosystem would have a huge impact.”
The public will have several opportunities to view the new murals at upcoming events, like public paint nights, this fall at the Tybee Island Marine Science Center. Visit tybeemarinescience.org/ to learn more.
