Birds on tower stir some clucking

As a mural on the water tower takes shape, people are already wondering what it will look like. The artist says: Just wait.

[Times photo: John Pendygraft] Monus Quality Painting and Pressure Cleaning owner Wayne Lynn, lefts, talks with Tom Stovall.

By WILMA NORTON

© St. Petersburg Times, published March 22, 2000

SEMINOLE -- The paint on the 110-foot county water tank here has been the talk of the town, even before artist Tom Stovall started adding clouds and birds to it Tuesday.

When he is finished in a couple of months, the tank will be covered with a mural of huge Florida birds, flying against white clouds and a blue sky.

People have been wondering whether the contractors applying the base coats got mixed up and put the dark blue on top and the light blue on the bottom by mistake.

Shouldn't the clouds be on top? they asked.

And, people asked, often with a wrinkle of their noses, are the ribs on the side going to stay that brownish color? Is that the primer?

Even a group of people who have pushed for the mural for years had the same questions as they gathered at the tank the other day for a kind of kick-off.

Pat Schmorantz, executive director of the Greater Seminole Chamber of Commerce, asked if the colors were upside down, and Mark Higgins, the person who came up with the idea for the mural more than seven years ago, said the rib color looked like something the Coast Guard would paint a ship.

But Stovall, the artist, assures all the amateur art critics that the colors are just fine.

The darker blue, not the clouds, is supposed to be on top, Stovall said, as he prepared to paint. He said if you look toward the horizon, that's how the sky truly appears. Darker on top with lighter areas closer to the ground.

And he promises the orangish-brown color on the ribs isn't going to look as stark when he is finished.

Stovall said his original plan was to have the ribs, which make the tank look a bit like a bird cage, painted a darker brown. But then some folks complained about the birds in the mural being caged.

"We decided to soften the color," he said. "Now it has more of an antique brown bird cage color to it."

The color should blend with the birds, he said.

"When the clouds and the birds get in, what is very obvious now will not be as obvious," he said.

Stovall started applying clouds Tuesday.

Within a few days, those who pass the tank will begin to see a 20-foot-tall roseate spoonbill appear on the side of the tank facing the intersection of 113th Street and Park Boulevard.

Over the next couple of months, a brown pelican about to start a dive will appear near the tank's top. A great blue heron, a white egret and maybe a couple of other birds will be painted at other spots around the top of the tank, which sits on 113th Street and 70th Avenue.

The county, which owns the tank, will pay $92,125 for the base coat, part of its routine maintenance program. The mural, one of the county's first ventures into public art, adds another $37,375. Stovall will get $25,000. The other $12,375 will pay for expenses related to the mural, such as paint and scaffolding.

The tank, the proponents said, will put Seminole on the map.

"When you see this tower with the birds," Mayor Dottie Reeder said, "you'll know you are in the heart of Seminole."

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