“So I shall die,” said the little mermaid, “and as the foam of the sea I shall be driven about never again to hear the music of the waves, or to see the pretty flowers nor the red sun. 

- Hans Christian Andersen The Little Mermaid -

Not the red-headed Disney princess we all know and love, these pieces follow the darker notes of the original fairytale by Hans Cristian Andersen. When a mermaid dies she becomes sea foam, forever to float on the surface of the water. I read this tale as a child, and every time I see sea foam my first thought is always ‘dead mermaid’. The bubble forms you see floating before you in the preserved sections of the ocean are inspired by the shapes of sea foam as it ripples and cascades through the waves and over the tides. The metal is 3-D printed steel, which I have hand-etched with gruesome sea-creaturesque imagery and added dimensions to with limbs and parts of protruding dead sea monsters, sat amongst the gems of the depths. Mermaids do not just dissolve wistfully away into bubbles, they melt and shrink and fall apart at the seams. These floating creations are merely scooped up dead mermaids solidified around your fingers, necks and ears.