WATERMEN'S WAY BOOTS PUBLIC ART
©️2023 Jean Offutt Lewis
I first heard about the Watermen’s Way public art project from an artist friend of mine, at a party we were both at, seated around our hosts’ dining room table. As Patty described the project, the idea sounded intriguing, so she offered to give me an extra flyer she had back at her studio. After the party, my husband and I followed her back there and picked one up.
I had seen similar public art projects in various cities in my travels: cows in New York City; elephants and donkeys in Washington, D.C.; fish in Richmond Virginia; mermaids in Norfolk, Virginia and other creatures elsewhere. Here the theme was to be Watermen’s Boots, worn by the men and women who work in the aquaculture industry on the rivers that surround the Northern Neck and on the Chesapeake Bay.
These classic, iconic watermen's boots can be found on the shelves of most hardware stores around here.
But these boots were big, oversized, white watermen’s boots. Boots that people could stand in. Public art that the public could really interact with.
I discovered that the project was to benefit three different organizations on the Northern Neck of Virginia: The Watermen’s Way Association, the Steamboat Era Museum, and the Rappahannock Art League (which was later rebranded as the RAL Art Center.)
I've always wanted to do public art, and this project would be a way to “break in,” so to speak, so I quickly went about putting together a submission. Not only did they ask for my information, but they wanted an idea of what I might do for a pair of boots. So I called the contact person, asked some questions, and then got to work by first doing some research, before coming up with an idea.
There were just 15 boots that were being sponsored by various businesses and organizations in the area and just 15 artists would be given the opportunity to show off their talents and have their work displayed around the community. I wanted to be one of them.
A visit to a commercial crabber for research. A bathtub is used to paint a signature paint scheme on all their crab trap buoys. My speculative idea featured white boots with multicolored, miniature three-dimensional buoys hanging all over them. The final was a different design altogether.
A few weeks later, I was notified that I had been selected as one of the artists, which was great news. Then I discovered that my sponsor, the entity that I had been assigned to work with, was the Town of Kilmarnock VA. I was to work with the mayor, Mae Umphlett, and one of the Boots’ project organizers from Town Hall, Susan Cockrell. The town was in the midst of building a new Town Centre Park smack dab in the middle of Kilmarnock, and the vision for the boots was to install them somewhere in the new park.
My speculative idea was enough to get me the gig, but now it was time to come up with a concept that was specific to the Town of Kilmarnock. The town derived its name from the town of Kilmarnock in northwest Scotland and that inspired me to consider using tartan somehow in the design. And yet, here we were working on watermen’s boots, and in a community where people still make a living working the water, harvesting crabs, oysters, rockfish and other delicacies from the local waters. It was during a brainstorming session with the mayor and her colleague that we decided to marry those two ideas into one. Create various critters from the river, and make them up in a tartan design.
So off I went to work on coming up with a bunch of critters indigenous to the area: a jellyfish, a rockfish, a crab, a pufferfish (aka a blowfish), a perch, and an oyster. And then the appropriate tartans to go with each critter.
I found an authentic "Kilmarnock" tartan on a Scottish website and it was great reference as I began to create my own tartans for all the other river critters. The tartan shown here is one I designed for the rockfish, Rocky.
I drew the critters by hand. I drew up the tartans on the computer. I spent a lot of time researching tartans and found one named "Kilmarnock." It was not the same as what the town uses in some of its promotional materials; it was blue, but it was authentic, so I used it for the crab. As the critters began to take on an identity, I started giving them names: Jelly the jellyfish, Rocky the rockfish, Jimmy the crab (the actual name watermen use for a male crab), Puffy the blowfish, Percy the perch (fish), and Muddy the oyster (named by my husband Todd.)
I then printed out the tartans I designed and created full color characters, which I presented to the Mayor and they were immediately approved. Now came the task of getting these characters onto the boots. How was I going to do that? I had just 5 weeks left to do the final production. Not a lot of time at all. Painting all the tartan seemed out of the question. It would probably take me more like 5 months to do all the painting that would be required. So I arrived at another way of making this happen by the deadline….which was the date when the Town Centre Park was planning to open to the public.
Character development began with research on the Chesapeake Bay's website. I based Jelly on a Lion's Mane jellyfish. They "winter" in the Chesapeake Bay from November to March. Bottom photos: Rocky the rockfish (striped bass) and Muddy the oyster come to life as I cut up printouts of the tartans to create each critter.
I thought about the graphics used on buses and other vehicles, printed out on vinyl, that are wrapped, via heat transfer, onto those three dimensional, curvy surfaces that are outside in the elements every single day. Maybe that would work for the boots as well. So I contacted a local sign company, that did graphics for vehicles and boats, and asked if they would be interested in working with me on the project. As it turned out, they had done some work for the Town in the past and were willing to work with me on the boots.
So then I got started working on drawing the river critters (which became the title of the boots) on my computer in Illustrator. I had no idea of how to get the tartans integrated into my critter designs, so I reached out to my old college roommate and fellow advertising design student from my days at Syracuse University, Toni Toland, who is a whiz at all the graphics software programs and taught them at S.U., and asked her if she could help me. It was great to reconnect again and learn something new from my dear friend, and I couldn’t have gotten the project done without her teaching me a new thing or two. (Thank you, Toni.)
Then the day came when the boots were being delivered. All the artists and many of the sponsors gathered at The Steamboat Era Museum to get their pristine, white fiberglass boots right off the truck, and take them off to their studios to get working on them.
The boots arrive after a cross country drive from Nebraska and find a home in my studio. Once I had the design worked out in my head, I smoothed out the boots' surface with fairing compound before spray painting.
But there was one thing that did not sit right with me about the boots: a large groove had been etched around the sides and up the front of the boot. I wanted a smooth, even surface to wrap the critters onto, so one thing I had to do, early-on in the production process, was to fill the groove with a compound, sand the area, and after I had mapped out the sizes and locations of where all the critters were going on the boots, spray paint the boots white.
I wanted to keep the boots white, the “classic” color of a watermen’s boot. And since the boots were designed for people to stand in them, I decided to paint the step, in the back of the boot, with a paint that had a sandy grit in it, to make it non-skid.
After creating digital versions of each river critter, I printed them out in a variety of sizes and tacked them onto the boots with sticky putty as I configured the final design. The crab's blue tartan is based on a tartan named "Kilmarnock Football Club Old Tartan" found on a Scottish website selling authentic Scottish fabrics.
Next came the color proofing of the river critters on vinyl at the sign company. Then adjusting the files to get the color right. Once we had arrived at a final proof, the next step was to output all the vinyl, and transport the boots to the sign company, making sure they were well padded so they would arrive safe and sound and remain clean and white.
The process of putting the critters on did not take as long as I had envisioned. Roxy, the owner of the sign company, did the job of wrapping the critters on the boots. When they were all finished, we called the Mayor, who came by to see them, gave us the thumbs up, and then we delivered the final boots to Bill’s Auto Body shop in Lively VA, where all fifteen boots were sealed to help protect the designs and weatherproof them.
Vinyl printouts of the critters are wrapped onto the boots with heat transfer, the technique used to wrap buses and other vehicles. The final product poses with The Town of Kilmarnock's Mayor Mae Umphlett and the artist.
After a couple of days, the boots were ready to be picked up and delivered to the Lancaster County Library, where most of the boots were on display for the community to see, prior to their installation at their respective locations. I loved seeing what all the other artists did with their boots, and was particularly excited when I caught sight of the first person to stand in my completed boots. And the second. And the third.
Kaysean was the first person to stand in the boots, while on display prior to final installation.
His brother Kamerun was next to climb into the boots.
Followed by their sister Karmyn.
River Critters ended up in the splash pad at the Town Centre Park, where children love to romp in the water in the summertime and climb into the boots for photo ops with their parents, grandparents, and friends. And the boots also attract bigger kids, teens, and adults, who get to access their “inner child” when standing in them.
I’m glad I kept the background of the boots white. Not only are they "iconic," but they really pop out at me every time I drive by the park.
To read more about the Watermen's Way project, visit: