By Franky Cruz, AIRIE Fellow

Photograph by Monica Mcgivern /Franky Cruz

Concrete houses made of paper and robotic soldiers at war against their enemies of heat and humidity surround me as they keep the indoors cozy. I sit somewhere in Mayami on a tiny patch of grass between cuboids made to shelter humans from the winged biomechanical vampiric beings with a kamikaze blood focus on the vessels. I recall experiences with pen and paper writing as I imagine my instrument a crow feather black ink quill. On this dapple of nature I remember what it was like when this was more a tropical hardwood forest with giant oaks painted with bromeliads all around. The elevation is ten to eleven feet above sea level. When this place was more like that place.

The silver cord that connects my experience with that of our natural environment has been braided and thickened, helix layer by helix layer, by my time spent in that thirty-day summer atelier at the River of Grass.

I arrive too early at the darkest blue o’clock. At about five thirty in the a.m., Eager to drop into whatever bed like structure existed in my emerald nest. The Laboratory keys where not on the table. With woodpecker wrists I wake up April. While the darkest hue of April becomes the lightest blue of May above my head, I take an early morning barefoot hike on the neighborhood trail. Contact. The same trail that while riding on the found in the room where machines wash rags, a two wheeled rusted chain travel machine labeled “Artist in residence,”I met a what I thought was a giant white rabbit that revealed itself A very light almond feathered tufted nocturnal bird of Prey. A secretive owl that covered with one wing its talons to hide its bounty, leaving on the ground only viscous, magenta flavored, fiery red entrails attached to two white-feathered legs of some kind of white heron under the tree where the owl locked its gaze toward me. Eyes meet eyes I say my goodbyes.

Its time to un-tetris my objects, to make objects, out of the fossil fueled four wheeled gypsy caravan and into the laboratory atelier. Eyes settle into darkness, a forty 8-hour sleep is in order.

Eyes wide open and mind; frequency sponges like limestone of the aquifer as I treat experience like the water that flows thru and shapes it. I accept fire as an important element in this river’s existence and let it fuel me. I install by hanging my canoe like a hammock between two slash pines to paint fire on it, it becomes a phoenix as Bob Marley sings into the pine island neighborhood…

“Eh, we got some thing they could never take away, We got some thing they could never take away and its the fire (fire) and it’s the fire (fire)”.

On a sunrise bicycle ride as the everglades stretches and yawns the surround sounds of the hawk and the pig frog song assisted by a duet between the crickets and the small bird orchestra. A yellow painted turtle little legged itself into a pond as a male carpenter bee whizzes past my face declaring that I am in its territory. Cardinal couples replace tollbooths on the hopper highway. Cannibal Lubbers feed on the road killed bodies of their brethren. Blood-sucking insects become muses and are declared the real kings and queens of the badlands. I paint portraits of Tabanidae adversaries. Crows are too smart to care. A red shoulder hawk dives onto its prey gripping it with its ratchet like talons in front of me while at the laboratory. I watch the bird of pray fly backwards onto the near by radio antennae. Inside the lab I play on paper with natural pigments that act like rivers flowing into an estuary.

Walks on trails surrounded by long pines seem to hold the key to the treasure chest that is this journey. Pines stand like bent soldiers on either side as I covet the hearts of palmetto. I imagine myself in flight, the size of those aerial acrobatic pollinators as my limbic system records the smell of the palm bloom. My perception of time slows down to appreciate a mosquito swelling up a stygian red with my blood and it is like watching the sunrise at Pah-hay-Okee.

On the metal horse riding along a back trail, I come across and almost over a dragon with diamonds on its back from the east, its body one muscle curled in strike position with its head swaying slowly from side to side with elliptical pupils and heat sensors aimed in my direction smelling me with its tongue flicker, I stop passed it thirteen feet away, in an adrenalin fueled hypnotic state I stare at this glorious creature as it stares into me and fumble for my upside down camera. Visitors share stories and make moments. I tell them to beware of Poisonwood and Manchineel and that the arrow that killed Ponce de Leon was dipped tipped in that poisonous sap.

  Photograph by Franky Cruz

I let the rain fill my depression and it turns me into a dome at home where cypress grow out of my skin like hair follicles, air plants like symbiotic lice accompany the pines, turtles covered in duckweed hide in my sweat and only alligator flags planted here fly.

In this environment my boots become claws. I wear the skin of the creature, my outside appearance now a white bird. Some kind of heron who’s seems alien in its own environment, some kind of heron whose plumes weigh more then gold. Undivided the human animal stands knee deep in the holy water consumed by adoration for this majestic river of grass. The Everglades, where the price of entry are droplets of crimson flowing life that streams through the veins and where the quality of liquid is the real currency.

Forever glades flutter light during sunsets that eclipse any painting of sunsets. The son paints the sublime in orange and gold the vanilla clouds that are slashed by violet and lapis lazuli blue rays. A gradient of shades more than I can name enter my retina. Between them a better conversation then I can literate. Landscapes that would make the German romantic shed that same one little tear cried in the Keep America beautiful propaganda.

Photograph by Franky Cruz

Dark blue light shades into darkness as the night sounds of the crickets and the screech owl adorn the night air. The moon rises as it vibrates in Big Cypress. Fire flies are hard to capture, mosquitoes are easily lured in. Back in Miami I remember what it was like when this space was that place.

“Tiny Wild Flowers” Franky Cruz Photograph by Daze Rodriguez

Watch AIRIE fellows transform our urban landscape with Wild Billboards this fall, read more at ww.airie.org