 A
Mermaid Fair by Peg Laflam
Who would be a mermaid fair,
Singing alone, combing her hair
Under the sea, in a golden curl
With a comb of pearl, on a throne
I would be a mermaid fair;
I would sing to myself the whole of the day;
With a comb of pearl I would comb my hair;
And still as I comb’d I would sing and say,
"Who is it loves me? Who loves me not?"
(From the poem The Mermaid by Alfred Lloyd Tennyson)
I have designed my Art Doll Challenge to represent the
person I want to be or…I cannot be sure, is it the person within me who
wants to come out. I cannot think of anything better than being able to
swim without care (except to my ringlets) under the sea while visiting
with all of the fish, shells and coral formation…and can you believe,
the mermen? Or, as Alfred Lloyd Tennyson says further on in his poem…
I would fling on each side my low-flowing locks,
And lightly vault from the throne and play
With the mermen in and out of the rocks;
We would run to and fro, and hide and seek,
On the broad sea-wolds in the crimson shells,
Whose silvery spikes are nighest the sea.
But if anyone came near I would call and shriek,
And adown the steep like a wave I would leap…
My mermaid has an upper body of Ultra Suede with a face
created from Pigma pens, colored pencils and fabric pens. Her body is of
marbled fabric that I made myself. Her tail and her leaves are also of
Ultra Suede with the addition of commercial fabric on the leaves. I spent
a long time trying to come up with the person I wanted, but when I finally
decided upon making her a mermaid, everything just seemed to fall into
place with the fabric, the poem and the ringlets. The seaweed cape is
machine embroidered on a water-soluble medium and has been enhanced with
sequins and beads befitting the life underwater. |
