ophelia-

Ophelia is a character from Shakespeare's Hamlet, she is a young noblewoman and Hamlet's sweetheart. When she is rejected by Hamlet she goes mad and eventually winds up a suicide by drowning. Lesser artist's than Gardega have portrayed Ophelia at the apex moment of her drowning after she has "fallen" from a willow tree. Gardega has decided to present her as a straight forward portrait of melancholy and loss and madness as she stares straight out to confront the viewer. I must admit that when I first made her I was in a terrible state over a woman and simply made a portrait of her (my girl) in glass. I named it Ophelia as I did not want to name it after the girl. At the time I was not aware of the story behind Ophelia or even that she was a character of Shakespeare's Hamlet. I also did not know about Ophelia's association with flowers as I etched the flower medallion necklace on her. I have come to believe I don't think I named her Ophelia by accident, I think life is not stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.