This is my interpretation of a deep sea fish. So many of the creatures that inhabit the deep oceans look fearsome, if not downright ugly.

I find their appearance interesting rather than ugly, superbly evolved for their environment and purpose - survival.

Inspired by two pictures of deep sea fish, The Deep Sea Oracle is both of them, a cross between a Fangtooth and a Tigerfish, it's a fish that's never likely to exist**; except in my minds eye, existing now, represented in grey marble.

The teeth are carved from the solid marble; a challenge to say the least. First I drilled between the teeth with various sizes of tungsten tipped drills. However these were a little too susceptible to juddering and likely to break a tooth. So with the limited tools available here in this part of Turkey, I made a shaft extension for a standard electric drill mounted grinding ball which proved to be very efficient. With much patience the mouth cavity was eventually hollowed out.

In fact as it turned out, the mouth and teeth took forty times longer to do than the rest of the piece. If anyone out there is interested in a set of marble teeth, I think I'm sufficiently practiced now to offer my services.

I have tried to retain as much of the surface of the original pebble as possible, the back, part of one side, the back of the tail, all the underside, the eyes around the pupil and the chin [if fishes have a chin].

I couldn't resist including an epiglottis, [visible in the last two pictures], it seemed to look right, the Fangtooth Tigerfish is therefore the only fish in existence that has one.
[Apparently all other fish don't need an epiglottis because they simply close their gills when they eat].

** If a Fangtooth and a Tigerfish met, one would likely eat the other.

Progress Pictures

Original Pebble                                                                           Pencil Rough

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Completed Sculpture

< this is a 'tweaked' image at stage 3 to visualize the teeth

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Also

Some deep sea fish that inspired Deep Sea Oracle
[These are pictures of actual fish]

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