Cocooning April 2020 – March 2022

Wikipedia describes cocooning as “staying inside one’s home, insulating from perceived danger, instead of going out”. You can find a lot of creatures cocooning in nature of which shells are one of the best representatives of this behavior to me. 

In April 2020, in the middle of the first Covid lockdown, I made my first shell. As inspiration I used a tiny shell that you can find all over Curaçao and which is endemic to the ABC islands (Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao); the Cerion Uva. Also named Kokolishi di kalakuna or Gebakerd kindje. I made it so big that my Jack Russell can easily hide in it!

After that first one I continued to enlarge other small shells that you can find on Curacao’s beaches but which I had never seen before I really started looking. Later on I was inspired by friends who brought me beautiful pieces from their private shell collections. 

As vaccination programs surge around the world and there is light at the end of the tunnel I am slowly loosing interest in making more shells…. coincidence?