Supporters of the Environmental Learning Center gathered recently for an Open House Celebration and, while the night may have been hot and steamy, everyone agreed that the new epoxy flooring in the Discovery Station is really, really cool. Custom designed by Crystal Ploszay, CEO and lead artisan of Unicorn Epoxy, the 2,000-square-foot flooring incorporates the various ecosystems and marine life from lagoon to ocean that make this such a special place to live.
“So tonight is a celebration of a variety of things,” said Barbara Schlitt Ford, ELC executive director. She said that in addition to the public getting a first look at recent ELC renovations, it was a chance to get a final look at the works of four artists shown in the Lagoon Room and Tidal Gallery.
“We’ve been renovating our Discovery Station and wait till you see that amazing flooring. It’s an immersive eco-art flooring system, with several different habitats – mangroves, lagoon, seagrass, ocean – it’s really something to see. So we’re very excited about that tonight,” said Ford, as people began to arrive.
“And we’re also celebrating our three new roofs; on the welcome center, the administration building, and the outer pavilion. And then we haven’t had a big event since we installed our two new sets of stairs and our raised boardwalk with engraved planks,” said Ford. “We just wanted our supporters and volunteers and community members to come out and help us celebrate all that they helped make happen here.”
As people wandered about, they were entertained by music by Michael O’Brien and sipped on refreshing drinks from Sailfish Brewing Company.
“I’m pleased to have done this project. I teach classes and do custom installations like this all over the nation now, but I grew up in Vero, so I really wanted to do something close to home.
Barb is such a great director, and she did all the right things to raise the money. I know that we’re still looking for sponsors for pieces of this floor, but I think it really came together beautifully,” said Ploszay.
“Our original project was to include like 37 animals in this floor. But because I grew up here it’s got a piece of my heart, so I’ve got 587 animals painted in this floor instead of the original agreed upon 37. All of that has been a donation in kind from my company to the ELC,” said Ploszay.
She said that one fun little add on is that the floor glows in the dark, adding: “Hopefully the glow-in-the-dark will bring another stream of revenue to this space, so that we can have a bigger impact on the environment.”
To get the glow effect, she said that the ELC could install a black light or have children point flashlights at the floor for 10 minutes and then turn out the lights.
“As I was doing this, I was kind of focusing on the whimsy of the play space,” said Ploszay. One way was to include little mangrove crabs in the rocks she crafted that function as steps for little ones to be able to peer into the touch tank.
Other areas of the flooring were made to look like the boardwalks that ELC visitors use to meander through the mangrove forests of the 64-acre campus.
“So what you’re looking at is industrial flooring materials; this isn’t a painted floor. This is epoxy; these are professional flooring materials. The action that we use looks like painting, but really it is a state-of-the-art floor installation. First, I’m an installer and then I’m an artist,” said Ploszay, who worked with two assistants on the roughly three-week project.
The ELC will play host to the Pelican Island Conservation Society Bird and Nature Show, which runs Oct. 2-30. For a full calendar of events visit firstrefuge.org. For more information about the ELC, visit discoverelc.org.
Photos by Kaila Jones
