MIAMI A 16-year-old looking to boost his art school application took a bow Thursday for being the one behind the grand piano that mysteriously showed up on a sandbar in Miami's Biscayne Bay.
Nicholas Harrington said he wanted to leave his artistic mark on Miami's seascape as the artist Christo did in the early 1980s when he draped 11 small islands in Biscayne Bay with hot pink fabric. And if it helped the high school junior get into Manhattan's Cooper Union college, that would be OK too.
"I wanted to create a whimsical, surreal experience. It's out of the every day for the boater," Harrington told The Associated Press.
"I don't like it be considered as a prank," he said. "It's more of a movement."
On Jan. 2, Harrington, his older brother Andrew and two neighbors lifted the instrument, which had been trashed during a holiday party, onto the family's 22-foot boat and took it out on Biscayne Bay. There, they left it on the highest spot along a sandbar.
Harrington is the son of "Burn Notice" production designer J. Mark Harrington. The piano is an old movie prop that sat for four years in Harrington's grandmother's garage. The teen had talked about hoisting the instrument from a tree or using it in a music video, among other projects, his mother said, but nothing happened until the winter break from school.
The teen said he grew up in a family that appreciated art and architecture, and he had his parents' support for his scheme.
"The weirdness of it all just comes easily," he said.
The piano sat undisturbed in the bay until last week, when Suzanne Beard, a local resident, took her boat over to the sandbar to take a look. Her picture of pelicans roosting on the instrument ended up on the National Geographic website. From there, the story went viral, much to Harrington's surprise.
"We pretty much forgot about it until it became super popular," the teen said.
He said he had planned to remain anonymous -- except for including photos of the installation in his college application -- until others began claiming responsibility.
"I think it was much more powerful as a mystery," said the teen's mother, Annabel Harrington. "It put Miami on the map in a good way."
