The wonderful historic city of Savannah, GA is a place my mom,sisters, and I will always remember with fondness. One of many stories we heard about on our visit a few years ago was of “The Waving Girl”. A young lady by the name of Florence Martus spent much of her adult life making sure each boat that came by the island where she lived was greeted with a handkerchief wave during the day and a lantern at night. It is said she probably greeted the seamen and passengers of about 100,000 ships with her wave. The SS Florence Martus, a Liberty ship built in Savannah in 1943, was named in her honor. Rumors abound that the reason she waved at each passing ship was because she was waiting for a lost lover to come home. Read this article for more of her fascinating story.

After hearing about this girl we visited the beach. While wading in the water and watching some ships pass by, I noticed my shadow and it reminded me of the waving girl. So I decided to be the waving girl in shadow and snapped a picture.

One of the art challenges in September for the Documented Life Project was using silhouettes with the theme of journaling with photos. The journal prompt was: “There is no shadow without the light.” I decided to do a watercolor painting of this photo combining all three parts of the challenge- a shadow that formed a silhouette on the sunny beach recorded (journaled) by a selfie photograph.