Also exhibiting will be a human, Kat Rust who paints the artists. But is it art? Artist and gallery owner Terry Bastian thinks so. “When I brought some images to Boston and showed them to museum curators , art educators and critics I asked them to help me evaluate this outsider artist, they were impressed. When I told them the artists were dolphins, they were amazed.”

One museum, The Peabody Essex in Salem is considering a show in 2012. Bastian points out that dolphins are so much a part of life here in Florida that it is important for people to consider how we can help protect them and their habitat. That is where the Dolphin Field Station funded by the Georgia Aquarium at Marineland comes in. Their mission is dedicated to rescue, rehabilitation and release of dolphins and small whales in Florida and Georgia.

Bastian, who co- owns the Special T Tours Gallery at 11F Aviles Street in St Augustine with artist Mandy McAlmont is excited about this cross species collaboration. The money raised will not only go to dolphin rescue but be used to create our next environmental art installation the “Turtle Trash Island”, a floating ecosystem in the shape of a turtle made of the very trash that is endangering turtles and other marine life.

Environmental Art is the art that explores the relationship between culture and the natural environment. Last year Bastian and others wrapped Massachusetts in blue fabric showing where the sea level will be if nothing is done about global climate change. This helped pass the global climate bill in the State House that summer.

The exhibit will open on June 5th , the First Friday Art Walk, from 5pm-9pm and will be featured in the gallery all month. Another exhibition is being scheduled with the Dow Museum in July featuring the dolphin artists and more humans creating art of sea creatures real and imagined.

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Terri Bastian
904 599 5214