The airport has installed a multiple-work art display in the international arrivals corridors featuring paintings, pictures, poems, maps, and other media depicting the natural springs found throughout Central Florida. Travelers passing through the corridors encounter artworks offering hundreds of images of the springs, the caves that underlie them, and the water, flora and fauna ranging from crayfish and turtles to manatees and gar.
“The idea is that the “Orlando experience” really is all about the springs and the water here,” said painter Margaret Ross Tolbert, the principal artist, shown above with one of her works, “Orlando Springs.”
The images, maps and poems are drawn from a number of area springs, including Wekiva, Volusia Blue, Silver, Juniper and Silver Glen.
The installations also feature work by graphics artist Jarrod Ryhal, who was Tolbert’s principal partner in the project, and others including internationally-famed springs cave photographer Wes Skiles, who died last year. Other contributors include Bill Belleville, Jim Brown, Bill Foote, Eric Hutcheson, Mark Long, Nancy Morris, Tom Morris and Georgia Shemitz.
Tolbert said she hopes international travelers introduced to the springs and caves through the art will seek out the experience for themselves, or at least learn more about them.
“They need protection, and they really need our attention in that respect,” she said.
Source: Orlando Sentinel