Nada Hassanein

Democrat staff writer

Some locals are aiming to brighten people's days — through hiding little gems of artwork in nature.

Members of the Tallahassee Rocks group are leaving small painted rocks across town: in parks, libraries, nestling them in the flower bushes outside local businesses, or more obvious spots like on sidewalk benches.

You might find a glitter-dusted unicorn rock tucked behind at the base of a tree, or a deceivingly realistic one: a coiled red-and-yellow snake, a metallic beetle. Others are pop culture imitations, like Poké Balls, or motivational sayings: 'You are brave.'

Last weekend, instead of painting eggs for Easter, Lauren Scott and 12 of her relatives came together and painted rocks to "hide" in parks for others to find.

Scott has started doing this regularly — and she's roped her family into it too. They've transformed Sunday family dinners into a collective art project, painting vivid little stones together to leave at parks.

"It's gotten me out of the house a lot," she said.

Using acrylic paint, Scott paints themed sets of rocks. Recently she painted a Gilmore Girls-themed set — complete with Luke's Diner and Doose's Market logos and a Yale university flag — and scattered them around Cascades Park.

Her husband, on the other hand, prefers painting small monsters.

Tallahassee Rocks was started by Bonnie York and Melanie Davis. Other cities and counties across Florida have participated in the movement too: Fulton, Lakeland, Martin County are a few.

"This is something that gives families a chance to create together, to get outside together, to explore the area together," said local resident and an admin of the Tallahassee Rocks Facebook group, Gail Sloane, a local retired Department of Environmental Protection administrator.

The initiative piqued her interest when she started seeing them in Martin County, when she was caring for her mother who is being treated for cancer. She delivered many of her painted rocks to patients at a cancer treatment center there, to uplift their day.

"It's about community, creativity. It's about kindness, sharing a gift," she said.

Usually, the final destination of a rock remains a mystery to the artist. But as the rocks journey through the town, hid from one place to another, they start to carry their own intrinsic stories.

Thanks to social media, an artist can sometimes find out.

Once, Sloane was painting rocks with her mother's neighbor in Martin County. She discovered, through a post on Facebook with a picture of the rock which said 'love' on it, that her neighbor's rock ended up in the hands of a man who gifted it to his wife. But the day after he gave it to her, his wife died. The man kept it on his bedside table in her memory ever since.

"When she painted that, she had no idea who would find it and what it would mean to them," she said.

Scott has a "find one, leave one" strategy to keep paying it forward.

"If I find rocks at a park, I like to leave them somewhere else so that the creator can see where it travels," she said.

Reach Nada Hassanein at nhassanein@tallahassee.com or on Twitter @nhassanein_.