Homage to the Orange River Valley
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| This is a project that set off an unprecedented series
of events, which I hope someday will be told properly and in detail by someone with the
desire to write a great adventure novel.
This installation was one of the first landmark steps towards the realization of a replicable reconciliation of art and life or art in the context of life; a rare and delicious instance in the history of humanity where there is abundant evidence to support the notion that art was irretrievably changed for ever. Yet it happened in the silence of quiet experimental art, save a few glimpses by close observers but none really aware of the project's detail and the series of events that led to it. I could not come out and shout eureka! because I wasn't sure of it myself and even if I did, no one would have believed it. Quite frankly, had I said something like that the project would not have occurred, environmental conservation was overwhelming enough at the time. Homage to the Orange River Valley is evidence that art can intervene in the chaotic state of the world affairs to offer a new level of rationality that can engage the people to experience their environment as an extension of their own culture. |
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| Permitting of a project requiring a dozen or so agencies
to approve the project is typically, expensive, time consuming and
generally frustratingly riddled with regulations and obstacles. One only
have to recall "Surrounded Isles" by artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude in
Dade county the same year, who toiled to obtained permits for the two week
project beginning in 1981, they completed their project also in 1983. Homage to the Orange River Valley was permitted for perpetuity and is located at the heart of a Natural wildlife Sanctuary, conditions that usually require an act of congress before it can be approved. The fact is, that it took about fourteen days for us to obtain the permits, no attorneys, no cost other than the $324 Dollars for the permit registration stamps. The permit was issued on February 1, 1983 and on March 20, 1983 we inaugurated one of the first permanent environmental monuments in the world. |
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| The sculpture was fabricated at Cape Coral Fabricating by Mr. Doug and Dana Parsons, Mr. Don Sounders and myself. |
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| The idea of art in the context of life had never been so
vivid in my experience as it was during the installation of the work, at
the mouth of the Orange River.
On the natural perspective, the sculpture is at the exact point where the west Indian Manatee makes a right turn into the Orange River, in route to its cold weather refuge at the warm waters of the electric power plant water discharge channel. I was told that in time the pilings that support the sculpture will also provide support and shelter for a number of aquatic species and the structure itself will become a favorite perch for yet a number of local birds. On the human side, the sculpture provides a landmark to warn boaters boaters to the presence of manatees or introduces the creatures to visitors boating these waters for the first time. |
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| The unveiling celebrations created an opportunity for the
first concert on the water ever in Florida and an spectacle viewed from
the comfort of people's own boat. The festivities included the presence and words of special guests like the legendary Dr. Jesse white, who pioneered manatee physiology and captive breeding techniques and to whom I dedicated the work. Messages from government officials from Washington, the State of Florida and Lee County Government. Most remarkable perhaps was the dramatic response of the community who came to welcome a new work of art in the last place they expected to see one, being commissioned to do a job that art had never done before, that is, as a sentinel on watch for an endangered species.. |
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Contributing Government Entities and Officials |
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Contributing Businesses, Business leaders and Art Patrons |
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Contributing Media Services |
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Artists and Production Cast |
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| I designed the structure, produced the engineering drawings, specifications, researched the environmental impact analysis and worked on and directed every operation involved from beginning to end. However what made the project possible was the power of collaborative effort, driven by the desire to do something needed, useful and representative of the human spirit breaking new territory on behalf of life , all life. |
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| Homage to the Orange River Valley, was featured on
National Geographic Magazine's September, 1994 issue. Photo by Fred
Bavendam. The issue"man and Manatee" provided a dramatic insight into the
state of the manatee as a species and featured it greatest advocate Dr.
Jesse R. White. The following year, 1985, Homage to the Orange River Valley was also part of a Reader's Digest article "Marvelous Manatees" by Mark J. Walters. |
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| In 1989, Homage to the Orange River Valley won the Florida Governor's "Night Beautiful Award" with a solar array of lights illuminating the sculpture with 120 watts of power. This became the first work of public art to use Solar Lighting, an irony not lost on the fact that the towers on the background are those of the FP&L fossil fuel Power Plant. |
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| The sculpture is regularly maintained and refurbished by
me, in this occasion with the help of Mr. Bud Gordon and other residents
of the Orange River Harbor Community, whom actually maintain the solar
lights for which a resident created a special fund at a local bank to
provide for their maintenance. During this refurbishment operation, I discovered that a certain part of the sculpture was home to a few members of a rare species of bats. That I think, dramatically illustrates my mission to establish art in the context of life and the new relationship between us and the world that it makes possible. |