When I walk into Meshuggah Cafe, Bryan Payne is hunched over his sketchbook, scrawling away. I almost feel weird walking over to him and breaking his focus. Payne sees me first, though—his eyes flit up and he greets me. Flustered per usual, I apologize for being late.

“Feel free to grab a coffee or something—I’ve just been sketching,” he says.

I accidentally get a hot tea instead of an iced coffee. Life just happens so fast sometimes!

Payne doesn’t seem to mind. After all, he’s here to talk to me about his awesome project, Doodlestones. Payne finds stones in rivers, and then draws characters on them with felt pens. Once he’s finished, he hides them in various parts of St. Louis, takes a photo of the stone in its hiding spot, and then posts it onto Facebook and Instagram as a clue for potential finders. Ultimately, it’s meant to promote a more cohesive St. Louis.

Student Life: How would you explain Doodlestones as a project?

Bryan Payne: I find stones in rivers all over Missouri, and then I interpret them into characters and I hide them somewhere in the world and take a picture that tells a story then leave them there, and then I put the picture online as a photo clue.

SL: What inspired this project?

BP: My trade as an artist is treasure hunting, so I find random stuff in the rivers and I repurpose them for art. So I find artifacts that are 100 years old, then tell a new story with them. I started drawing on stones, and people really liked that, so I kept going.

SL: What is your background?

BP: I studied screenwriting, and I was working in Los Angeles as a writer. I came here to work on a story about the river, and I realized how much potential and excitement the river brought, so I just based my whole life around it.

SL: Are you from St. Louis originally?

BP: Yeah, I am from St. Louis. I moved to Los Angeles to write. I came back here on a whim, thinking that I needed to work on this project. And then I never left; I became obsessed with the river.

SL: When did you start making Doodlestones?

BP: I started at the beginning of this summer. I took a treasure hunting float trip and found lots of white stones on these beaches. I thought they were perfect little canvases, so I doodled on them at the campsite. I didn’t know what to do with them, so I hid them around the city, sculpting them into a new project.

SL: I’ve read that Doodlestones tie back to the situation in Ferguson—what’s the goal of Doodlestones, exactly?

BP: First and foremost, it’s to spread joy and art. For people that don’t have access to art, they could come to a place and then happen upon a Doodlestone. They can be inspired and maybe have it improve their day, which is needed a lot post-Ferguson. Our city is really divided; people are seeing things as a black/white issue—not [just in terms of] skin color, but thinking that everything is one-sided. It seems like in order to heal, you have to offer what we know and listen to what other people have to say. Just providing people with positivity would allow me to be a part of the conversation in a totally different way.

SL: Is that what the goal of the project started out as, or did it evolve into it?

BP: I was inspired directly because of Ferguson, but then the details of the project evolved out of the river and my connection to the river.

SL: Can you elaborate on your connection to the river?

BP: I spend most of my time at the river. I’m there every single week. I walk all the banks—I know them really well. The city has such a disconnect from its source of water, so my work is meant to bring awareness—even though it’s subtle—to the river. So, in addition to connecting people to Ferguson, the goal is to connect people to the water.

SL: How long does it take you to make each stone?

BP: With some stones, I’ll see them and draw them, and it takes five or ten minutes. Other times, I’ll stare at a stone for 30 minutes, then start to form it, then put it down, then pick it up in a couple of days.

SL: How do you decide where you want to hide the stones?

BP: I keep a bag of them on me all the time and then I wait until I see a spot and I think, “That would be a cool spot for a stone,” and then I look through my bag for a stone that “talks” to that spot. Other times, I have an idea where I want to put them. I try to tell a visual poem that’s either fun or playful or touching.

SL: How do you decide what you want to draw on them?

BP: The stone tells me. I just look at it long enough and I think, “There’s a rabbit in this.” I see it and I just draw it.

SL: Do you ever get attached to a certain stone that you don’t want to give away?

BP: All the time. I bring myself to put them out there anyway. I take a good picture of them, where I can make a good story, and then I’m like, “I know I can make more.”

SL: That sounds like having a child.

BP: It is. But it’s like, I know that there will be more that I like in the future.

SL: What’s your favorite part about doing this?

BP: I like taking the pictures, because that’s the storytelling element, and that’s what I’m best at. I like offering stories where I can tell a little bit of one, but my audience can also tell part of the story, so I leave a lot of them open-ended. For example, I did one of a snail Doodlestone and a fortune cookie I found half-eaten on the ground. I asked the audience [on social media] to tell a story. Between Instagram and Facebook, I got 100 people who told their own little punchline.

SL: How do you feel about people in other cities who are replicating their own Doodlestone projects?

BP: I think it’s great. I mean, some people credit me and others take it as an independent project. I can’t say that I invented it entirely—I invented my interpretation of it. There are at least 20 other sub-Doodlestones, like Doodlestones Australia, Doodlestones U.K., different parts of Canada and all over the United States, and they credit me, so I think that’s cool. If someone else wants to do their own thing and say it was their idea, that’s cool too. It’s more about connecting people, and if someone needs to do it independently, I hope that their art and their skills and their drive and their project will help them blossom as an artist. I know it’s doing that for me.

SL: Can you talk about your upcoming project in Nepal that’s taking place January 2016?

BP: This really cool nonprofit organization called Global Arts Therapy has seen my work. They thought it was really cool, so they asked me to teach it to three villages in Nepal who are all in crisis situations because of the earthquake and because of civil unrest with the government, so I’d be going over there and giving kids and adults tool, and showing them how they don’t need much to express themselves, to feel like they can do something, to play, to feel good about themselves and also have a small voice in whatever’s going on. I’m super, super excited. And everything in the country is paid for by the nonprofit, I just need to get there, so I’m raising $3,600 basically to get there, to get shots, visas, plane tickets, all that.

SL: Do you have any upcoming goals for Doodlestones in the future?

BP: I want to go on a world tour next year. I want to get people to sponsor stones—the cost of each sponsored would equate to a point. When a city gets a certain amount of points, I will add it to the tour list, and then I’ll visit the city and hide a whole round of stones—so I’ll go to a city and hide like, 50 stones. That’s definitely the big dream. Once I’d do that, I could never go back—I could Doodlestone all the time. Which is definitely what I want to do. I like doing other art, but I think that people relate to Doodlestones. I like the idea of getting as many little treasures into as many people’s hands as possible.

Check out Doodlestones on Facebook.