Brontosaurus

Brontosaurus, originally uploaded by mebooyou.

Aug. 22--To the artist, it's a statement. To Jim Tucker, who plans to pay for the piece, it's a dinosaur.

Someday, the 40-foot brontosaurus will stand in the lagoon near The Boat Marina, aerating the water to make it more habitable for sea creatures.

"I like dinosaurs," said Tucker, who owns the marina.

"I like to know about them. I thought I'd just build my own and I can't imagine a better place for a dinosaur to be than standing in water in a lagoon-type environment, surrounded by green."

Tucker is the Fort Walton Beach city councilman who once parked a giant tree trunk at city hall and invited people to write poems about the oak's demise.

The artist, Bill "Shady" Grady, is building the dinosaur at Tucker's marina. He wanders around, surveying the wooden frame, sharing his strong opinions about the pollution of local waterways.

"This thing is going to be a statement about stormwater," said the Mary Esther man. "Our stormwater system is just a dinosaur."

Grady estimated it would take him about a month to finish the dinosaur, which will have a wood-and-steel frame, covered by foam and fiberglass.

"My pieces take hundreds of hours," Grady said. "There's no plan. That's how I do everything. It's art."

Tucker described Grady as a "free spirit," who "has no clock that he goes by." The two have not worked out a pay scale. Grady said he is building at the boatyard because it's a good place to build a dinosaur.

"I might get paid, maybe," he said, not sounding too concerned. "He might like it."

Copyright (c) 2006, Northwest Florida Daily News, Fort Walton Beach

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Source Citation
"Dinosaur to inhabit marina." Northwest Florida Daily News [Fort Walton Beach, FL] 22 Aug. 2006. Florida Database. Web. 12 Mar. 2010.
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