Sandy Margret shoveled an 800-pound buoy out of the Island sand. She found the rusty hunk of metal washed up on shore. And she brought it back to her art gallery to paint her next big art project and show it off. “It took three solid days of digging and we had a guy out there guarding it,” Sandy said. Today, the buoy sits inside her art gallery for sale on the Island, waiting for a new home. In 2010, Margret, 50, opened up Kingfisher Gallery and Taxidermy located at the Sea Ranch Marina on South Padre Island. Most days she is preparing Gyotaku prints, an old Japanese technique that involves printing an image of a fish on linen or rice paper using the fish itself. It is an art form she mastered in college. She attended taxidermy school years after she turned away extra business for years from people who wanted to display their fish. Margret said she was a high school teacher before she opened the gallery. An urge to start her own business, to be her own boss and open up an art gallery on the Island, became her next art project.
