Spotted: Dragonfly Banquet, A Floating Mural And Artists’ Collective
Reader Kathleen Higgins snagged this photo of the quirky Dragonfly Banquet roaming the waters of the Rockaway Inlet this past Sunday.
The vessel is a unique raft made entirely of recycled materials by Tim Johnson and Gretchen Neutrino in 1995, and the raft’s beautiful murals were painted by Gretchen in a fit of psychedelic inspiration.
The ship itself originally arrived in the New York-area after sailing down from Provincetown, Massachusetts, making a stop in Martha’s Vinyard, then reaching its final destination in Broad Channel, Queens, and becoming a part of the artist’s collective in the middle of the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge.
The Dragonfly Banquet is a raft constructed entirely from recycled materials of another ship, that was also constructed of entirely recycled materials. The original ship, known as the “Son of Town Hall,” was the first vessel made entirely from scrap and recyclables to cross the Atlantic Ocean.
The journey of the original ship was a perilous two-month trip that featured a crew member heart attack, and intense storms with gale force winds. What remains of the “Son of Town Hall” is probably what’s built into the Dragonfly Banquet, as the original vessel was set for imminent destruction by French authorities as of 2008.
