Fresh air whipping our faces and destroying any semblance of a hair blowout, as we flew over the sawgrass prairie and rivers of the Everglades on private airboats, was a welcome escape from the crowds of South Beach. This nature excursion, masterminded by Anne Pasternak, President & Artistic Director of Creative Time, with the Everglades Foundation on December 6, was part of of the art non-profit’s mission to unite artists with organizations to spur creative responses to societal calamities. Here we learned the water supply for over seven million a day is the most critical issue, not to mention the out of state pythons that were let loose, massively multiplying and wreaking havoc on the animal balance.
Artists on board included JR, Prune Nourry, Ellen Harvey, Seth Cameron, Blane De St. Croix, Seth Cameron, Oliver Clegg, Rhys Gaetano, as well as Creative Time trustees Tom Healy and Michael Gruenglas, and Everglades Foundation Board members including Carlos de la Cruz.
Photo by Maureen Sullivan
With pythons and alligators in mind, though invited to wade in the water, we deferred to walk instead on the boardwalk tree island where they had set up a sunset wine cheese happy hour alongside alligator viewing, beautifully capping off our wilderness adventure.
