This marble statuette of a mermaid wrestling with a hook caught in her tail was carved during the summer of 2010, which I spent on Long Island, New York. I was the Artist in Residence at Gallery North in East Setauket, and I wanted to carve something with a bit of local flavor.

The idea for Long Island Sound originated on the day of my arrival on Long Island. News of a possible moratorium on lobster fishing in Long Island Sound was on the radio as I pulled into the gallery; it got me thinking about the island's deep connection to its environment, and how Long Island, like elsewhere, must perpetually walk the line between development and preservation, between the needs of man and the needs of nature. It's easy to forget that we are in fact a part of nature, as connected as a mermaid's tail is to her human torso. I depicted a mermaid struggling to remove a fishhook from her tail as a reminder that when we injure Nature, we are injuring ourselves.