Mermaid Madness

This tale of mermaid madness begins twelve years ago in 2001.  

I had been living in Florida for two years, caring for my terminally ill father.  When his battle with lung cancer ended and I had taken care of winding down his affairs, I knew that I was too drained to go back to my usual course of work as a paralegal.  I decided that it would be a good time for me to head off to Mexico and hang out there for awhile -- rest up and see if I thought my dream of retiring along the ocean would be realistic.   

At the Mexican Consulate in Orlando, I obtained a manejar de casa document  (translates to "drive the house") which would allow me to take my personal possessions listed within the document into Mexico with me.  As I didn't know how long I would be in Florida, I had driven there from Seattle with my 1968 Volkswagen van filled with only my precious possessions -- music, art supplies, clothes, books -- and those few things that I had brought with me would accompany me to Mexico.  These items needed to be listed on the manejar de casa document so that I would not be hassled at border crossings.  AAA provided me with a TripTik.  I had my 1968 Volkswagen Van gone over with a fine tooth comb by the local Volkswagen mechanic and my Seattle friend Giselle agreed to join me on the adventure of driving from central Florida to Puerto Vallarta -- she would fly to Orlando, I would pick her up there, and our adventure would begin.

Before leaving Florida, one of the things that Giselle and I wanted to do was visit Weeki Wachee Springs. Earlier in the year I had seen an article in Smithsonian Magazine about the small "theme park" which had been in operation since 1947 and featured mermaids performing in natural underwater springs.

Giselle had also seen the Smithsonian article and was up for the kitschy trip -- the park was a short 20 minutes from my Dad's hometown, and we decided that we'd visit Weeki Wachee the day after she flew in -- leaving home early in the morning so that we could wander the park in coolish Florida morning hours.  

I picked up Giselle at the Orlando airport on September 10, and the next morning we sprang out of our beds, had breakfast, hopped in the van, and headed off to Weeki Wachee for our mermaid adventure.  Since we were some of the first to arrive, the park was still relatively quiet.  Upon entering the park, we took each other's pictures posing as Weeki Wachee mermaids:

We saw the underwater mermaid show and the trained animal show with birds and dogs and other animals.   Mid-morning there were still only a few people in the park and I made a a comment, wondering if the funky old park was "dying"  because of so much competition from newer parks like Epcot and the DisneyWorld.  We took the riverboat ride, searching for crocodiles and snapping turtles and other beasts.  Our aged boat stalled, and while it was stalled, someone on the boat made a comment about sabotage.  Giselle and I looked rather blank and one of the boat riders said "Don't you know what happened?"  Still clueless, as we hadn't turned on the radio, TV, or computer while breakfasting (remember, this is pre-Twitter, pre-Facebook, pre-cell phone madness), we had no idea that planes had crashed into the Twin Towers  that morning.   No wonder there were so few people in the park!

Shortly thereafter, it was announced over loudspeakers throughout the park that the park would be closing in a few minutes (as would all major attractions in Florida).  Giselle and I had to miss our final two activities of the day -- a chat with and being photographed with the real live mermaids, but on our way to the parking lot, we ducked into the gift shop where the employees were anxious to close the shop, and  I quickly bought a little softie mermaid who would live on my VW dashboard as our muse and protectress for our long drive through Florida, Louisiana, Texas and Mexico.

So, when folks remember where they were when they first  heard about the Twin Towers, Giselle and I are the only two people in the world whose answers would be that they were on a stalled riverboat in Weeki Wachee Springs.

Our drive from Florida to Puerto Vallarta is filled with many other tales (Mexico/USA border closed, attack of the mosquitoes, the thunderstorm from h___, the broken accelerator cable and the man with the machete, etc.), but this blog tale is about mermaids . . . so . . . back to the subject.

With my Weeki Wachee mermaid still on the dashboard, we were welcomed to Puerto Vallarta's  Malecon by yet another mermaid -- Carlos Espino's 1990 sculpture entitled "Triton and Mermaid."

To make the proverbial long story a little shorter, I lived in Puerto Vallarta for several years as a working artist and was represented by two galleries.  I lived in several different apartments (yet another series of tales) and my Weeki Wachee mermaid moved from my dashboard to my bathroom and she lived amongst shells I collected on the beach and other pieces of Mexican mermaid folk art I started accumulating.  Here are a few:

This is a hand-painted half gourd with ceramic mermaid tail added as a headdress.

Ceramic Neptuno with mermaid body.

Ceramic mermaid in hand-painted gourd bowl.

Hand-painted tin -- the mermaid's torso opens to a mirror.

When I decided that it was time to get back to the United States, after having lived in the sun in Florida and Mexico for 5-6 years, I didn't want to return to gray and rainy Seattle, but wanted to live in a sunnier-than-Seattle environment, and decided to give Albuquerque a try.   I made two trips to Albuquerque to "audition" the town and found a place to live.

 The only document that I needed to leave Mexico was the paperwork on the VW van as they don't want citizens from the USA bringing in vehicles to sell/leave in Mexico.  Oh yes, and a special set of paperwork to explain why I was driving without any license plates on the van -- they had been stolen several weeks prior to my departure.

Upon arrival in Albuquerque, I settled in my little adobe casita and despite living in the high desert, my master bathroom has continued to be decorated with an underwater/mermaid theme and my Weeki Wachee mermaid moved into my new bathroom.

I quickly immersed myself in the local art scene and have continued to be influenced by my mermaid muse and have taught several mermaid-themed classes over the years I have been in Albuquerque.

Here's a sample of the soft sculpture mermaid class I've taught at both China Phoenix 2 and OffCenter.  My mermaid is wearing a shell bra made from shells beachcombed from Bucerias, a small beach town north of Puerta Vallarta.

And, here is one of my matchbox mermaids -- a class I taught at Papers! about four years ago.

And, here's one of the paper doll samples I created for my 2012 paper doll class at Papers!   You can find the templates for the mermaid figure at http://www.theenchantedgallery.com/

Below is the 11x14" sample I created for my "Mermaid Grotto" collage-on-canvas class taught at Papers! this past summer (2013).  The mermaid tail is Japanese yuzen paper, the water is blue unryu paper, the ocean sand is a handmade paper, and the grotto elements are ribbons, fussy cut images and embossed images. You can find the coral rubber stamps from I Love Rubber Stamps at http://www.iloverubberstamps.com/ and the large light blue seaweed on the right was created using one of my favorite rubber stamps from Lost Coast Designs 

and can be found at http://www.lost-coast-designs.com/borders.html

In this summer's class, all the students worked from the same supply of paper, but as you can see below from photos submitted by the students who allowed me to include their completed works in this blog post, each piece of art is very individualized.

This is Maria's piece -- bright and colorful with her mermaid contemplating the merits of two beautiful large shells.  The center grouping of red and purple seaweed was created using a Martha Stewart repeat border punch!  And Maria used the Lost Coast Designs rubber stamp for the teal colored embossed seaweed on the far right.

This is Juli's piece entitled "Dream Grotto" -- this is a bird's eye view with Juli floating in her dream grotto.  Juli used softer colors and textured and print papers to create the rockscape surrounding her grotto.

 This is Tammie's piece in more natural colors -- note the beautiful tapestry mermaid tail and the sense of motion she created by the flowing hair and using leaf ribbon for the drifting seaweed.

And, as a final note about Mermaid Madness, I was happy to discover that Weeki Wachee Springs is still operational -- and was made a Florida State Park in 2008!  If you are ever in Central Florida, be sure to save time for a visit to the park to see the underwater mermaid show!   http://www.floridastateparks.org/weekiwachee/