The Kelp Forest:

Following the closure of my last glass studio in 2002, I enrolled in Marine Biology courses, first, at Santa Monica College. I continued with Marine Biology studies, and over time I acquired a Bachelor's Degree in Marine Biology from UC Santa Cruze, and then a Master's of Applied Science in Aquaculture from James Cook University in Townsville QLD. One major segment of my several years of Marine Biology study at UC Santa Cruz involved ninety-seven dives in Monterey Bay kelp forests, experiencing the kelp forest environment firsthand. I saw that  light varied greatly at seafloor depth, and that the colors in the kelp forest environment were beautiful, predominantly greens and blues, with some purple hues. Prevailing light depended on factors such as overcast vs sunlit skies, time of day, or the thickness of the kelp canopy. There was pretty much always floating debris in the water. Occasional turbulence stirred that debris as random sea life acted out daily routines, lingering, curious, moving with the currents, and typically, likely, just looking for food despite distraction, of which I was one… not  unlike our mermaid. I was looking for tiny reef fish. She was contemplating her reflection in a seashell.

Verisimilitude:

Vedder’s chalk drawing is simple and idealized. It depicts a clear single tone light blue sea environment. I suspect there was no real effort at verisimilitude. After all, it was a mermaid. I know such coloring and uniformity was not to be found in the kelp forests at the seafloor in Monterey, where I dove, and our mermaid is clearly in a kelp forest. I suspect Vedder’s drawing was conceptual, initial, preliminary, reflecting perhaps little more than the color chalk he had on hand. Ultimately, Tiffany would have selected the glass… and  I wish I could know what Tiffany actually did in his execution of the window, but unfortunately the window no longer exists. Tiffany was a painter who heavily emphasized the use of glass for lifelike color rendering in his windows. He championed the minimization of paint in favor of glass to depict lifelike color in his landscape and floral theme windows, and it is those for which he was most famous.

The Mermaid With Fish:

“The Mermaid With Fish” was one of Louis Comfort Tiffany’s  favorites, kept in his personal collection. It is now viewable in the Field Museum. That mermaid is composed against, almost within, a floating, surreal, flowing, watery background, of blues and greens. “The Mermaid With Fish” consciously depicts a ghostlike apparition. She blends into that watery background, hidden almost, as if camouflaged.

 The Vedder drawing, as this window, is thematically different.  It aspires, and I aspired, to simulate the colors and feel of a kelp forest environment, with a solid sea floor on which our young mermaid can carry on with her day, settled on her boulder, contemplating her image, as a young mermaid, or any young girl might, after or while discovering her reflection in a seashell. Vedder’s mermaid is temperamentally as well as thematically different than the “Mermaid With Fish”.

Materials:

There are up to four layers of glass where there is painting, on the hands, arms, and face. One layer there is painted, one provides opacity, and the other imparts a skin-like texture, with the watery layer atop. One layer of glass covers pretty much all else, for a total of two. The top watery  layer was fired with frits on a dimpled mold to produce a watery look with some occasional floating debris and shading.

I used seashells for her necklaces, including the one she wears, and I incorporated well over a hundred sea shells in the windows. At least 120 are wrapped in braided copper in the necklace in her hand, alone.

 Much of the structural channel is layered with heavy braided copper. That was done partially to provide added strength but aesthetically as well to suggest a sea net in the grid, akin to what I’d done earlier in Dave’s fishnet dome. The rest of the came is reinforced with a copper wire colonial profile on the face of a lead channel.

 I framed the glass in Pennsylvania Bluestone. The frames are absurdly heavy, but they are for looking at. Not moving. The color and texture is intended to finish and complement the colors and materials in the glass and metal work, such that the materials comprise the art, and complement and correspond to the colors and materials used, glass metal, and stone alike. The idea was certainly not mobility.

The girl:  

Elihu Vedder used his daughter, Anita Herriman Vedder, for a model, not just for his mermaid but for other works, such as the Cumean Sibyl, of which I have, quite coincidentally, possessed a print for forty years. I took liberty to alter his mermaid, and the image in mine is a composite of my twin daughters, face and shape. Anita was a larger girl with a strong jutting jaw.”- Martin Duffy