Mosaic Mermaids

Written by Elizabeth Kimball

Last month, the East Beach Peninsular Magazine featured a special group of 

military spouse volunteers — The Tidewater Officers’ Spouses’ Association Mosaic Mermaid Club! Four of our very own writers are involved in the group! Gina Warren Buzby leads the group, and Michelle Davenport, Jenny Sparks, and Elizabeth Kimball all volunteer! Here is an excerpt from the article and a few photos of the volunteers and the mosaic mermaids they create!

Mosaic Mermaids that Give Back to the Community 

Elizabeth Kimball's Mosaic Mermaid

As we pause to reflect and be grateful for our freedoms, I’d like to share a coastal craft and highlight a hard-working and artistic bunch of military spouses volunteering to create beautiful mosaic mermaids sold to benefit military families. 

Michelle Davenport, Gina Warren Buzby
& Elizabeth Kimball

Many of these volunteers are our neighbors, and all of them are members of the Tidewater Officers’ Spouses’ Association (TOSA). TOSA has two charity boutiques in the Hampton Roads area: The Tidewater Collection on Naval Station Norfolk, and the newly opened Tidewater Collection Too at Naval Hospital Portsmouth. Once on base, anyone can shop at the boutiques where the unique line of handmade mosaic mermaids are sold. The mermaids come in several different sizes with each one is hand-crafted and donated to the boutiques by members of TOSA’s Mosaic Mermaid Club. Our very own East Beach neighbor and professional artist, Gina Buzby, leads the group, and East Beach resident Jennifer Weech serves as TOSA’s president. The boutiques are run by TOSA volunteers, and all profits generated from the boutiques’ sales are donated to charities that support military families. Because the volunteers donate their time and materials are donated and purchased through a generous donation from USAA, TOSA is able to donate 100% of the proceeds from the mosaic mermaids to military charities. 

Gina Warren Buzby & her 'class'

Each month, Mosaic Mermaid Club members meet at the Armed Services YMCA on Independence Blvd., and spend four hours creating mermaids to donate to the Tidewater Collection charity boutiques. Armed with brown-bag lunches and creative ideas, the volunteers select a wooden mermaid form (a licensed replica of the Norfolk mermaid) and begin picking out the glass they will use. There is a table full of tools to score, cut, break, and shape the glass into the perfect pieces. Some mermaids have incredibly intricate designs, reminiscent of the painting technique, pointillism. Others are more like a watercolor, awash with brightly colored glass in a fluid design. The group has just started making multimedia small ornament-size mermaids to complement the growing collection of 15- and 24-inch wooden mermaids. Once the mermaids are complete, they are displayed for sale in the boutiques, and all the proceeds benefit military families.

Thank you, volunteers of the TOSA Mosaic Mermaid Club, for using your creative energy to give back to military families. Your service is appreciated! 

About the author: Elizabeth S. Kimball is the author of “The Gatlins Come to East Beach” which will be published in Volume II of By the Bay: East Beach Stories in 2017.