“This owl began with a copper kettle that’s probably 100 years old. It’s a big, utility kettle, not a fancy one, that I picked up at the Deer Isle dump. I knew I’d eventually make a bird with it because the spout looks like a beak. The wing is the blade of an oar, also from the dump. I cut the feet from a chunk of a Coast Guard cutter hull that I found at a Portland scrapyard. The breast is from a Phippsburg mill that’d been passed from father to son for 200 years. It’s closed now but was my source for wood for a long time.
“When I got out of art school in the 1980s, I had no way to make a living, so I started a jam and jelly business, which was a crazy thing to do. I stuck some sculptures outside from my master’s thesis show, and eventually I sold them all, so I made a few more. Now, I have piles of scrap metal and other things all over the place. I have in excess of 60 sculptures and several buildings that I built with scrap wood and old doors and windows. I thought I’d be selling jams at fancy stores in New York, but people come here, enjoy the sculptures, and buy jams and jellies.”