SYLVIE MAZEROLLE

Sylvie Mazerolle

Sylvie grew up in a New-Brunswick fishing village off the east coast of Canada. Sylvie creates and pursues her photographic work with great artistic expression.

 Artist Statement: Mermaid Tears

This series of 12 fine art photographic images was inspired by a poem I read titled: “I Want To Age Like Sea Glass by Bernadette Noll. My visual interpretation of the poem showcases women’s strength, beauty, confidence, sensuality and vulnerability.

 We start off with idealistic dreams, wishes and plans for this journey we call life but we soon get tossed around and thrown off kilter. As women, wives, sisters, friends & mothers we stand against the ebb and flow of the tides of life. In that turmoil, we become not broken but softened, polished and treasured.

 The final prints have a layered affect using organic textures found at the location site and digital manipulated to give the images a painterly look and a soft patina to resemble the etching of sea glass.

 Images are printed on fine art water colour paper using archival ink.

Printed images are 12 inches x 12 inches size with a 2 inch border, 2 inch acid

free matt along with frame for a 18 x 18 final size.

Small matted works image size: 6 3/4 " x  6 3/4".

I Want to Age Like Sea Glass by Bernadette Noll

As I hit 49...

I want to age like sea glass. Smoothed by tides, not broken. I want the currents of life to toss me around, shake me up and leave me feeling washed clean. I want my hard edges to soften as the years pass — made not weak, but supple. I want to ride the waves, go with the flow, feel the impact of the surging tides rolling in and out. 

When I am thrown against the shore and caught between the rocks and a hard place, I want to rest there until I can find the strength to do what is next. Not stuck — just waiting, pondering, feeling what it feels like to pause. And when I am ready, I will catch a wave and let it carry me along to the next place that I am supposed to be.

I want to be picked up on occasion by an unsuspected soul and carried along — just for the connection, just for the sake of appreciation and wonder. And with each encounter, new possibilities of collaboration are presented, and new ideas are born.

I want to age like sea glass so that when people see the old woman I’ll become, they’ll embrace all that I am. They’ll marvel at my exquisite nature, hold me gently in their hands and be awed by my well-earned patina. Neither flashy nor dull, just the right luster. And they’ll wonder, if just for a second, what it is exactly I am made of and how I got to be in this very here and now. And we’ll both feel lucky to realize, once again, that we have landed in that perfectly right place at that profoundly right time.

I want to age like sea glass. I want to enjoy the journey and let my preciousness be, not in spite of the impacts of life, but because of them.