Teen says he put grand piano in Miami bay

MIAMI (AP) — A 16-year-old looking to boost his art school application took a bow today 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.