Colette’s Calendar is a journey into elfland, with an attitude twist!

Think of a fairy.

What’s the image in your mind? Tinkerbell? A shapely little body, wings of gossamer, a twinkly light?

Hmmm.

Colette Mesdag threw all that to the wind when her March fairy walked past a wedding reception line. Colette, who owns Lasting Impressions Professional Photography, was “shooting” the wedding, but she had room in her mind for fairies that day. As luck would have it, she was seated next to the woman whose energy and comportment had nudged her into Colette’s awareness. Colette spoke of her fairy project to the woman and voilà! The March fairy, laying in a field of daisies, misted over with rain.

Doesn’t sound like Tinkerbell, does it?

Well it isn’t. Phase One of Colette’s fairy project is launched right now with a 2002 Calendar that features 12 fairy images, each diverse, each a beautiful photographic image all on its own.

Take January, for instance. The January fairy is a wolf-elf, dressed as a gelfling from The Dark Crystal movie, shot in a wooded location near Colette’s New Lowell studio.

Or April’s fairy. A diminutive girl just hovering on womanhood, captured bouncing out of an equally remarkable tree whose gaping hole seems to hold its fairy in its bosom… a beautiful image. The April shot is even more spectacular as Colette shares that just weeks after the shot, the tree collapsed inside itself.

Some of the pictures in Colette’s calendar are quite sensuous… “I was trying to capture the earthiness, the naturalness of what I perceive a fairy to be. Some times earthy becomes sensual. There’s an honesty to these pictures and there’s lots of diversity around them.”

There sure is. Two of the images, October and December, are Colette’s own children. Her daughter is caught, wings and all, mesmerized by a crystal ball that she holds in her hands. Its lightness is almost spellbinding.

And December’s fairy is shot in the snow, featuring the only male image in the calender. Caught in the winter’s sun, dressed in thin white clothes, with silver hair, fairy ears and holding a shaft of light over a lake, Colette’s son is a fitting tribute to the end of 2002.

These 12 pictures featured in this calendar are only the beginning. In all, Colette’s fairy project will capture 40 images and ultimately take shape as a coffee table book.

But for now, 12 framable images that you can enjoy at your desk, on the kitchen wall, wherever, for the next 12 months.

For your copy of Into The Mystic, you can call Colette at 424-5505, Barrie Figure Skating Club’s Sherry Dubois at 739-0681, Fooda Buddha or Earth & Sky Connection in downtown Barrie on Dunlop St., Jo-Dee’s Flower Shop in Angus or the Village Gallery on Highway 11 in Oro.

Cost is $20.

Thanks, Colette, for your persistence, your talent, and your ability to source great fairies!