“Adenika” (a mermaid comes to Ashland)

13 Oct “Adenika” (a mermaid comes to Ashland)

A beautiful mermaid mural on East Main Street.

Responses from adults and kids.

Micah’s mermaids transform lives.

Artist: Micah Blacklight.

Published October 2024.

“It has been totally magic, really amazing.”

Micah Blacklight

This is not “The Little Mermaid” from either Denmark or Disney. This is “Adenika,” a big, bold and beautiful mermaid who came to Ashland. If you have recently been driving, walking or bicycling along East Main Street, near the intersection with Wightman Street, you probably noticed this painting on a garage door. You may have wondered … who painted it? Why here? Why a mermaid? I have answers for you.

Who painted it? Why here?

This mermaid mural sprang from the homeowner’s desire to have a piece of art on her house that would inspire, uplift, and elevate the moods and energies of passersby of all ages, including many students who walk by the house on their way to and from school. Add to that the imagination and heart of Ashland artist Micah Blacklight. The two of them were introduced through mutual friends. When they talked, Micah proposed his idea: “What do you think of mermaids?” The homeowner loved it.

Why the name Adenika?

People have asked me, “Why is the mermaid named Adenika?” The answer came about with a little frustration (for Micah) and a little fun (for Micah and for us). As he was painting, Micah would stare at the mermaid taking shape – “waiting for a name to show up,” as he put it. Nothing quite right showed up. Finally, one day less than a month ago, Adenika told him (nonverbally) what name to give her.

Encounters while painting

Micah painted Adenika the mermaid in the spring of 2024. He has been deeply moved by the community’s response to this artwork, especially the personal connections that occurred as he was painting. 

As he put it: “The whole time I was painting it, I’d show up early and be here for several hours. Many different people came by, in both directions. Elderly folk who have been in the neighborhood a really long time would stop and say, ‘That’s beautiful,’ and ‘Are you the artist?’ and ‘Thank you!’ Complete strangers driving by would see me working, roll down their window and yell out, ‘It’s really beautiful!’ and ‘I love it!’ The response has been so profoundly beautiful.”

“As far as kids,” Micah continued, “Willow Wind [Community Learning Center] is the closest school. I’m involved heavily there, as our daughter goes to Willow Wind. For example, I MC’d at their talent show the last couple years, so a lot of the kids and parents know me. One time, there was a school track and field day at the high school, and the Willow Wind kids were invited to compete. So a whole rack of them walked past on their way to the high school. That morning I had my head phones on as I was painting, then suddenly I heard screaming – like really loud – and I turned around. There was this line of kids, just freaking out. One, because it was me. Two, because of this mermaid. Third, because I’m painting it on the house. It felt so good; it was so reaffirming. The teacher who was with them said that they were so grateful to have a piece of art like this in the neighborhood, to beautify it, to add so much.”

“As an artist, I am a line person.”

Micah Blacklight

You can see strong lines throughout the Adenika mural. Micah described that aspect of his visual art as a core practice or principle. “There are lyrical lines in my art. I like lines to flow. I am a line person – heavily a line person. I want my lines to go where I want them to go, how I want them to go there. I want my lines to look sharp. I want them to look beautiful. I want them to convey the energy and message I want to convey.” I got the impression that the rest of the art, such as the colors, builds from the foundation of “lyrical lines.” 

Along with strong lines, he also likes “color blocking, doing contrasting colors that feel good to me as I’m doing them, and feel good to my eye when I pull back. So much is about the energy and essence that comes with it.”

How Micah’s mermaids transform lives

Mermaids have been a favorite of Micah’s for many years. He actually created a collection of mermaid coloring books, which are available at local bookstores and online. They are all-ages coloring books, giving body-positive self-affirmations for adults as well as kids. 

The coloring books grew out of an experience Micah had with his daughter. Micah said, “When she was younger, a friend of ours gifted her with a plush mermaid and ever after she became obsessed with mermaids. She would constantly ask me or her mother to draw her mermaids. One day I drew one for her with a, shall we say, more robust posterior than she was used to and she remarked jokingly to me that mermaids weren’t built like that. I felt like her comment was the result of a parenting fail on our part, and determined immediately that I was going to take steps to address that mistake. So every time from then on when she asked me to draw her a mermaid, I’d draw her two: one with the dimensions and hair she’d apparently come to expect, and one in a thoroughly different vein. Eventually I drew one with thick everything: hips, stomach rolls, long thick locks, just rotund! And when my daughter saw this mermaid, she exclaimed ‘She’s beaaauuuutifulll.’ And I TOTALLY celebrated the win! 

“Then I went online and related my experience to my followers on Facebook and suggested I needed to either find or create a coloring book with Black and brown mermaids in it because they were way too hard to find. I was met with enthusiastic calls all round for me to create one. So I did, and the rest is history.” 

I asked Micah if adults as well as children had responded to the coloring book body-positive images. Yes, many times. He has heard from women who weren’t seeing their own bodies as attractive, then found “inspiration and newfound confidence in themselves and their looks” as they colored the mermaid drawings. [See mermaid book description in the References.]

A deeply creative life

Micah Blacklight has been a multi-talented creative force all of his life. Here is how Micah describes himself: “He is an illustrator, visual artist, author, dancer, graphic designer, fashion designer, motivational speaker, performance poet/mc, vocalist, Empowerment Coach and Inspiration Engine. … He began drawing at age 3 and wrote his first story at age six.” He worked as a graphic designer in the fashion industry for many years, then decided to focus full-time on his art in 2010.

Micah’s Columbia Hotel mermaid

As I was getting ready to publish this photo essay, Micah mentioned to me that he would be painting a mermaid on an entire wall in one of the Columbia Hotel rooms the very next day. I stopped by to see him at work; then he shared these finished photos with me. The room in which the mermaid “resides” is named “Blissed.”

The historic Columbia Hotel opened downtown on East Main Street in 1910. As the oldest existing hotel in Ashland, you might think it is a little stodgy. Perhaps it used to be, but no longer. It reopened in early 2024 as a hip hotel overflowing with art and culture. I wrote an article for Ashland.news about the history of the hotel. The article included photos of exciting new artworks in two of the first rooms that reopened. Micah’s mermaid room is the latest to be filled with beautiful art by a local artist. 

Closing words from Micah: “The underlying message is always the same: Inspire, and be inspired.“

References:

From the back of the coloring book — Court of the Diverse Mermaids (Subtitle: A Body-Positive. Multi-Ethnic Adult Coloring Book).

“Court of the Diverse Mermaids was created in order to foster increased appreciation for ethnic diversity in fantasy and art, and even more importantly, appreciation and embrasure of the many iterations the female form can and does take throughout the course of a woman’s life. Female bodies can come in so many different shapes and sizes, but only a narrow few are regularly celebrated in most forms of mainstream media. This book is designed as an innocuous means of slowly shifting how some of us view ourselves and others via the beautifully innocent and creative conduit of interacting with a coloring book. It can be a wonderful tool for relaxation, meditation, unwinding and de-stressing.”

Blacklight, Micah. Interview and personal communications, September 2024.

Blacklight, Micah. Website: https://artofmicah.com