It was like any other art exhibition—except the drawings were created underwater and guests were served chocolate milk.
But friends would say that’s just Hunter.
Almost everybody has heard of local artist Hunter Payne by now. If they haven’t taken a ride on one of the swings he put up around the area as part of his Swings Tampa Bay project or seen the full page spread about him in a Sunday issue of the Tampa Bay Times, they had to have seen him roaming around campus, giving hugs to everyone in sight.
Payne dropped out of the University of South Florida St. Petersburg after three and a half years last semester and quit his job to pursue art full time. The first dividends of that decision were revealed on Jan. 27 at Studio@620 downtown, where Payne unveiled “Let’s Draw Underwater,” a series of colorful drawings that were literally completed below the sea in Key West.
Most of the quirky, funny and sometimes strange drawings featured accompanying bits of text, with self-referential phrases like “It’s wet down here,” or “You thought I was going to draw a fish,” or “Brain of sand. I do not know why I wrote this.”
Others, hidden between jokes about vomit and Pokemon, revealed more about the artist for the viewers keen enough to notice. One read, “Everyone thinks I know what I’m doing.”
It seems they did. Payne paid for the hundreds of sheets of special Mylar paper, drawing utensils, the charter boat that took him to the dive sites and an underwater camera by appealing to the masses on kickstarter.com, a website that allows users to fund projects they deem worthy. Payne pulled in $1,292 in just four days, almost $300 more than he had originally intended.
The unveiling was full of friends, family, and those curious about Payne’s offbeat approach to art. As they navigated between the drawings—hung on sky blue walls with clouds above and more than two trucks full of real sand on the floor—Payne called them to the main room to unveil the documentary he created about the project.
With his flippant blond hair sitting zany as always, Payne fumbled with the video on a laptop while he thanked the crowd.
“I didn’t know that this many people cared about art,” he said, before adding, “I thought it was pretty stupid.”
The 14-minute long documentary was a theatre of the bizarre—full of scenes like Payne smacking his mouth at a picture of a cat, close-ups of nipples and gnashing teeth. In it, Payne jokingly introduced himself as a 43-year-old artist from Los Angeles. He also named the Florida Keys, “a land of free expression and home of the brave” before relating a story about how becoming an artist was a childhood dream of his.
“I remember my mom asking me, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ I would say, ‘I want to be a fine artist. I want to make $40 a day,’ “ he said.
The documentary and the drawings are interesting, if lacking in any deep artistic talent. The real reason for the exhibit, the reason for all the Kickstarter donations, the reason everyone showed up that night and laughed and cheered and clapped—that all comes from the charm and enthusiasm exuded by Hunter Payne. He summed it all up in his own words toward the beginning of his documentary.
“Turns out people get really excited when you’re really excited.”
“Let’s Draw Underwater” is on display at Studio@620 from Jan. 27 to Feb. 18. The Studio@620’s gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, noon to 4 p.m. The gallery is located at 620 1st Ave. S.
Email: arts@crowsneststpete.com
Photos by Daniel Mutter
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