Dolphin Trail Sculpture
The Dolphin Trail in Clearwater Florida is dedicated to the story of the rescued Bottlenose dolphin Winter, who lost her tail while being entangled in a crab trap, and was held in the Clearwater Marine Aquarium. Her story has inspired an entire community to focus on promoting marine conservation and activism for the environment.
Businesses throughout Clearwater show their support for marine conservation by placing dolphin sculptures at their places of business. TerraCycle along with TD Bank participated in a beach waste clean-up event in Clearwater Florida, and wanted to incorporate the collected waste in the making of their own dolphin sculpture. Our goal was to create a sculpture for the opening of a new TD Bank location that included the recycled waste from the beach clean up, and told a story of how local communities can bring change through direct conservation and clean up efforts.
The initial sketches focused on developing the base of the sculpture and the overall form of the sculpture. We were trying to develop an active sculpture that would exemplify how the prosthetic tail which enables Winter the dolphin to have a renewed sense of exploration despite not having a fluke can be shown in the final piece. Many of the examples of dolphins among the dolphin trail were not mosaics so we had an opportunity to differentiate our dolphin not only in the material object story, but also through the incorporation of waves and a prosthetic tail.
I created samples of the mosaic techniques that we would use in the making of the full scale dolphin sculpture. From these samples I was able to create measurements for the full scale sculpture which allowed us to determine the amount of time and resources that we would put into the final dolphin sculpture.
The more refined sketches were focused on communicating to the sculptor the overall form that we wanted to portray. The additional dolphin that was added into the renderings was to represent Winter’s friend Hope who ended up not being incorporated into the sculpture.
Bruce Lindsey of Integral Sculpture Works was able to take our concept and develop a 3D printed model.
I then plotted out full scale drawings for Bruce Lindsey to use in the construction of the dolphins frame for full scale production.
Taking the form that Bruce Lindsey had constructed, the entire TerraCycle team helped to apply the recycled beach plastic to the dolphin. Each piece of beach plastic that we put onto the dolphin took on new life as a dolphin mosaic sculpture.
The dolphin was eventually named Pinellope the Upcycled Dolphin, and now spends her time in Clearwater, Florida awaiting guests that come to take pictures with her.
