Melrose Creature Quest
A couple of years ago, I thought about placing small sculptures around the city - mostly in the gnarled trees that lined the path past Ell Pond. In the winter, they look like storybook illustrations, so mini dragons or ghouls or whatever perched on pruned limbs and tucked into trunk cavities was solid as hell. Certainly easier to picture in my head than a demon bear. I mentioned it in passing to the former mayor, who was game but couldn’t officially endorse it due to it involving city property and he was on his way out. So like most of my ideas, it petered out from there, another entry stuffed in an overflowing cabinet titled “This could be fun to do if you could ever stop pushing back the ocean with a broom.”
It wasn’t until I chatted with my friend Michelle, she of Meesh Pottery, that this went from a concept to a reality. She submitted an application for a grant from the Melrose Cultural Council and forced this into being. So cheers, Meesh, and thank you for that. There is no scenario where this would not have happened without your involvement.
From there came the real challenge - scale and efficiency. With one or two exceptions, the Odd Pegs Oddities have been fairly tall and have taken at least a couple of months (well, weekends in a couple of months) each. I did not have the time to crank out a series of 6’ tall monsters. But at the same time, I did not want to sacrifice detail. This was a fully funded project, and my client would not appreciate something that was essentially a scrap piece of 2x4 with googly eyes. Hell, I wouldn’t settle for that if it was something for my yard.
The gallery has details about each build, so you can go there if you want a deeper dive along with photos that show my total lack of ability to take decent pictures. Melrose Arts is hosting the creature quest site (thanks to them as well, especially their handsome and strong webmaster). Here is more of a self-congratulatory bow and an anguished howl.
Because yes, from May to July, I made four sculptures, along with another commission, training for the Pan Mass Challenge (donations accepted through October), and a family trip to Rome. And I only took the occasional day off from the corporate job. I created detailed sculptures from framing lumber that had charm and personality (and in one instance was legitimately cute and not threatening at all). They were on average about the size of our dog Milo (a terrier mix). And I brought a couple of long-simmering ideas to fruition. Sure, the last one - a shoe mimic - was close to being nothing more than a scrap piece of 2x4 with googly eyes, but there was honest effort into making it. Shoes are a hell of a lot more difficult to make than you think. It’s easy to get lost in the details when working big but something like the mimic or the jackalope needed to speak as loudly with a third of the size.
So yes, I am proud of what I did. But Christ on a cracker, it took a lot out of me. The summer came and went and I feel like all I got for it was a dozen old rock band t-shirts drenched in sweat and coated in sawdust. The family knew this project had a tight deadline and I would be preoccupied with it, so they graciously left me to my own devices Saturday and Sunday after Saturday and Sunday. But there were times I felt like they had taken not just a back seat to this side hustle, but a back seat in another car in another state. At the end of each sculpture I crashed hard, caught my breath, and dove back in again.
And yet, if there’s a moral to this story, I’m not quite sure I’ve sussed it out yet. Would I have done things differently? Certainly there could’ve been better time management and more pre-planning. But the funny thing about being creative is that there’s always a drive to do more, to do better. I’m not competitive by any means (my average cycling speed speaks that truth) but I’ve found I can’t leave well enough alone with this hobby of mine. I just trust that next time I’ll carve out a little more time for others.
In the meantime, I’m heading out to Sturbridge to ride 190 miles over the course of two days. At a respectable but not record setting speed. And best of all, my family will be waiting for me in Provincetown.
There are commissions to be done through November, but I’m taking a couple of weeks off.
