Feb 13, Waiting Below

 The dolphins in these paintings were our visitors from the Brookfield Zoo in Illinois.  And I only know this because my friend Merrit lives in Chicago and was aware of their visit to the Minnesota Zoo!  Isn't that fun?!

here's a video of their return to Brookfield!

I just always get a bit emotional about and around dolphins... when the Minnesota Zoo opened in 1978 we had them there, in the tropics exhibit where the tropical fish and sharks and skates are now. We also had beluga whales in another tank outside of where the interior wild bird shows are held. It was either that summer of 1978 or the next of 1979 when my brother Tom and my cousin Jim and I had a summer school class that dropped us off at the Zoo every other day at 9 when the zoo opened and picked us up at noon, and we were very unsupervised that entire time.

I can't even imagine that today!

One of the things we loved doing was playing hide and seek in the darkened nocturnal hallway in the tropics and running after each other on the Northern Trail. An amazing thing we did once (I'm not sure we were brave enough to do it more often, but I remember this happening at least once!) was we leaned WAAAAY over the railing of the dolphin tank and they came up with open mouths so we could scratch their tongues! I still can't quite believe we did that- we'd also play hide and seek with the dolphins below where the viewing windows are, running past the windows while they chased us, stopping quickly to hide behind the pillars... amazing to feel that this huge, beautiful, graceful water creature actually SAW me!!!  That made up for a lot of things in my awkward adolescence...

Waiting Below, 12x36 acrylic on canvas $865 click HERE for purchase info!