A Fintastik Friend to All

By Courtney Jones

Sarasota Scene is pleased to publish articles written by students at Ringling College of Art and Design. This is part of a collaborative program with creative writing instructor Sylvia Whitman to provide real life experiences to her students, many of whom will undoubtedly be our writers of tomorrow!  

In IMG girl’s tennis coach Lark Baxter’s spare time, she works with her charity Fintastik Friends. The charity helps get funds for AMP Fins that will be given to children living with limb loss, allowing them to swim as a source of therapy. “You wouldn’t believe it,” Baxter says, “but most of the children I work with lost their limbs in a lawnmower accident.”
Lark Baxter knows loss and it is through loss and art that she found the transformative power of movement. She suffered the loss of both of her twin brothers within the same year. While trying to wrap her head around the loss, she began to think about her own life.
“I was five years old when my father lost his leg in a lawn mowing accident,” she says. Baxter’s father was a double collegiate athlete in track and basketball. She remembers how happy he was when he came home from working with athletic prosthetic legs at Stanford as a physician. She would watch as he tried on the prosthetics and he would marvel at the wide-range movements the prosthetics allowed him.
Baxter also recalled the call she received from one of her brothers after her mother burned down their childhood home, shattering her dream of showing it to her unborn daughter Trinian. “I wanted to find a way to show her the magic I grew up with,” Baxter says. From there, she took on painting. Her first paintings were memories of growing up in Sarasota, highlighting the tropic, coastal city. She delved into art and grew an appreciation for it. Her house is filled with artwork. The walls are a pastel blue and various mermaids decorate the space. Baxter loves mermaids and tells me the story of how she got each one and how each was made.
Culminating her past, art, and grief together, she decided to refocus herself, putting her energy into something positive. She came across an article about Randy Lord, a man who invented a custom-fit swim fin that allows amputees to get back in the water for recreational and physical therapy purposes. He wanted to be able to go to the beach and comfortably swim with his wife. This article intrigued Baxter and she contacted him asking if he made the fins for kids. After hearing him say yes and expressing an interest in raising funds to purchase them, they struck up a friendship and Fintastik Friends was born.
What occurred next seemed to happen fast. “I was thinking it would be neat to use my love for both art and mermaids to raise money for these fins.” Baxter contacted Alexa Scanziani, the owner of Alex Art International and Kim Livengood, the owner of The Bazaar on Apricot Lane. These owners both located five artists to paint sculpted mermaids that would be sold during a silent auction with all of the proceeds going towards prosthetic fins for kids. “It was full of positive energy,” Baxter said, “the artists were so enthused they were arguing about who got to paint the mermaids!” In September of 2018, $2,200 was raised in a silent auction to purchase an AMP Fin prosthetic. “These fins are expensive. Even with my work in the charity and company, they are still around seven to eight thousand,” Baxter says.
With the continuation of this charity and Lark Baxter’s generosity, Fintastik Friends was able to give away their first prosthetic to an 11-year-old athlete from Chicago. “You fit a child with any prosthetic and they just go. They’re that resilient.”
Baxter hopes to hold another silent auction in January and start a mermaid festival in town that will involve the community and raise more funds for the fins. With her charity, she wishes to continue educating and bringing awareness to adults and children about limb loss. “The energy that comes with it is what’s best. It’s all about focusing on what you can do and not what you can’t do.”