Friday, May 27, 2011

Day 38: Work underwater

I didn't technically create this project underwater, so I'm not sure if I quite met the spirit of the prompt, but for some reason the only idea I kept coming up with had to do with a children's book from the Serendipity series written by Stephen Cosgrove and illustrated by Robin James.The book I was thinking of is called 'Featherfin' and I know I had a copy when I was younger but it either didn't make the move across the country or is somewhere lost in the apartment. When I looked it up again the story itself came back to me, in which Featherfin (a fantasy eel with peacock feather designs) dreams about the big world above the water, all his (her?) elders say it's no place for an eel, but Featherfin goes anyway and almost asphyxiates on the beach before escaping back under the waves.
I'm not sure I really like the implications, but it's the illustrations that lingered in my mind. I suppose the message still makes it pretty appropriate for the prompt.
The underwater part of things is in the video below, but I made a little Featherfin eel puppet out of a few scraps of fabric and a wire. It took maybe half an hour to put together and half of that was cursing at the netting that's sandwiched between the green fabric because it would not hold still. I have my girlfriend to thank for the gorgeous green-gold metallic fabric, and the whole thing was done in a big fishbowl I've had set up but sans water, that I keep meaning to get a few fish for. Now that it's full of water maybe it would be less effort to get a couple fish than to drain it again... In the meantime, it makes a good theatre for eel puppetry.

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