From Robert Genn - An Idea for Florida?

"One thing about Indianapolis," says the taxi driver as we pass by the almost hundred-year-old Indy 500 racetrack, "there's plenty of parking." I'm noticing that perhaps more than any other mid-sized city in the USA, Indianapolis embraces the automobile. There's urban sprawl in all directions. First-rate commuter roads head off over former farmlands into further subdivisions. Here and there, remnant woodlots or marshy bogs slope down to meandering rivers. Trying to save some of these remaining lands is why I'm here.

The Central Indiana Land Trust is one of 1,100 US organizations in the business of reserving and preserving natural lands and their threatened ecosystems. By purchase, gift, legacy or easement, the organizations round up parcels so future generations will be able to see what countryside was like.

We're having an art show--a fundraiser to draw attention to the cause. The Trust has chosen 15 prominent painters and asked them to paint on the Trust's lands. Each artist has contributed two works--most of them are plein air oils. These Hoosiers area hardy bunch; around here they've reinvented outdoor painting with gusto. I'm one of the jury. We get to hand out cash to the winning painters. More than three hundred supporters show up for the opening. It's a bash.Long ago and far away, Thomas Moran helped convince Teddy Roosevelt that the USA needed National Parks. Anyone who beheld one of Moran's panoramas of the Grand Canyon could see that the place needed protection. Many other artists such as John James Audubon and Ansel Adams have been instrumental in saving the picturesque and the natural. It seems to me that painters, more than any others, recognize the presence of sacred grounds.Going into a landscape and setting up an easel is an act of faith that just might bring further grace to the wild and beautiful. Unlike hunters and fishers, who also have a vested interest in preservation, artists take without taking. A painting made outdoors is a sacred event.

Long ago and far away, a passing hiker watched me paint a modest swamp near Mt. Rainier in Washington State. When he finally spoke to me, he did so in a whisper, as if he was in a cathedral. "Thank you," he said. "Now I see the beauty of it."About that time I began to see what my role might be, how we all had a job to do, and how we needed now to be more responsible.

Best regards,

Robert