Art Student Eyes Portfolio, Creates Piano Mystery, Garners Fame
It began as a Miami Shores mystery. One day a burned-out grand piano appeared on a sand bar off the South Florida coastline. Nobody knew how it got there or why. Eventually it became the story of a Miami high school student hoping to bolster his art portfolio. He was applying to a very competitive art college, The Cooper Union in New York City, and wanted to stand out.
For the media, the strange January appearance of the piano in the middle of the bay became a story with legs. For the state authorities, it was a matter of littering: a felony under environmental laws protecting the waterways. The parents of the student, sixteen-year-old Nicholas Harrington, viewed it as a family adventure that turned into a “magical” moment. World headlines proclaimed the mystery of the errant, elegant piano—where did it come from?
Nicholas launched the piano venture as a possible ticket into a prestigious art school. Rare among art colleges, The Cooper Union inducts only about fifty students to its freshman class in the fine arts division each year and offers them free full tuition (but not room and board). At Nicholas' high school, a teacher advised him to put something in his portfolio that stands out from other applicants. “He wanted to do something artistic,” the teacher told the New York Times.
According to the South Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, however, the art student did something illegal: “The bottom line is this young man committed a felony by dumping the piano in the bay.” Lenience prevailed for the suburban teenager and even for his complicit parents.
Nicholas is from an art-loving family. Back in December he and his father had moved the piano, an old movie prop (the father’s profession is movie staging), to their backyard dock. They planned for Nicholas to take it into the bay and make a music video. During a New Years party, however, drunken revelers set the piano on fire, which was fine with the family. They put it on the family boat and dumped it on the sand bar, set fire to it again, and took pictures of Nicholas playing the piano while it was aflame.
In the end, the video did not work out. Nor did the family make plans to collect the piano in the weeks that followed, even as the mystery and publicity swelled. “It just became so magical, and took on such a powerful energy—this wonderment of how it got there,” said the mother of Nicholas. Nicholas finally divulged the family's role (by calling the Miami Herald) when other people began to claim credit for the magical piano, but also after an ocean salvager began claiming rights on the debris.
We don’t know whether the event (a mystery resolved at the end of January) translated into something compelling for Nicholas’ art school portfolio, which is where the entire episode began. He certainly has a modicum of fame now. Miami Herald stories generated hundreds of online comments: How did the young man escape a felony? What were the parents thinking? And finally, “Hey, this is art” (and art in Miami), so give the boy credit.
At art schools today, any candid faculty member will confirm that it always works: If you can “stand out,” you will get more attention. It is a consuming thought for many artists. Furthermore, if you can say your art faces censorship, then you have been especially successful. As Nicholas seemed to prove, if you can create a public mystery, that is even better. Some artists don’t have the temperament to stand out. They may lack the money to finance a grand gesture. Some are curtailed by a sense of proportion, especially regarding the law or social propriety. According to some art critics, this urge to attract attention for attention’s sake has often led to shallow, bombastic art. Nonetheless, it remains an important part of the artist tool kit. After the Miami episode—known affectionately as the “piano bar” affair—we may see more efforts by art teens to burn their way into art school.
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