THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, August 19, 1994 TAG: 9408190557
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A16 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: SEATTLE TIMES
LENGTH: Medium: 55 lines
A lovable little boy meets an equally lovable but aquarium-bound orca. The boy resolves to free the whale and does so, to the chords of a Michael Jackson tune.
That's Hollywood. In real life, just as the boy actor returns to his trailer, the whale returns to its tank.
Keiko, the whale who portrayed Willy in the movie ``Free Willy,'' still lives in a Mexico City aquatic amusement park. But life does imitate art in odd ways.
Although Keiko has not met a little boy, he has met 38-year-old Wyland, a marine-life artist who still possesses enough childlike wonder to want the whale to go free.
Wyland, who does not use his first name, Robert, will take charge of Keiko in a year in exchange for painting a life-size mural at Mexico City's Reino Aventura seaquarium. The mural will depict Keiko among other whales in its native waters off Iceland.
It will not be Wyland's first such mural. The internationally known artist, now based in Hawaii, has made a career of painting whales. Last August, he painted one of his murals on the Dominion Tower parking garage, near Waterside in Norfolk.
``The first time that I saw the ocean, I saw whales,'' he said. ``It was at Laguna Beach in California, and the whales were out there in the distance.''
In 1992, Wyland painted the world's largest mural - more than a mile long - on the circular exterior wall of a convention center in Long Beach, Calif.
Behind the grand depictions, Wyland says, there is an environmental message.
``People don't expect to see whales on the walls of a city,'' Wyland said. ``If they see this, it just might inspire them to do something to help the whales.''
The artist himself seems to have had that effect on Keiko's owners.
Wyland was not the first person to try to free the orca. Michael Jackson, who wailed for Willy in the movie, asked to take charge of Keiko and was turned down.
``I went to see him with a bunch of people,'' Wyland recalled. ``Keiko just ignored everybody else in our party and swam over to me.''
Wyland said he is consulting marine experts about what to do with the whale. They will first find it a larger tank, he said, and try to train it to catch fish again. In the long term, Wyland would like to free Keiko. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Wyland
by CNB