Commercial Applications I

Following some newspaper publicity and word of mouth connections about twenty years ago, I began to get some commercial commissions. Although many of the businesses are now defunct, the variety of requests was astounding. For example,  I made a 25 foot long bas-relief chinese dragon for a futon store. I installed this at the top of their building on a brick wall. A logo I replicated in wire for a local Marijuana dispensary resulted in a 50$ tip because the proprietor only had a roll of 100s! A Basil Rathbone Holmes statuette I created for a mystery bookstore was awarded to the winner of a Sherlock Holmes look-a-like contest at a conference. Oddly, a Buddha I crafted for a local temple based on the one we visited in Kamakura, Japan was rejected. The priest said it was "too fat" for their sect. One of the most amusing projects was a 3-D sign for a hair studio in the central business district. After a colored pencil conference with "Cookie", the owner,  we settled on an upside-down pyramid with a hair ball on top! I even installed an all-weather light in the upper portion for fun. Lucky for me, she paid a professional sign firm to do the installation. "Liberated" from the site after the demise of the business, it now resides at a friend's vacation home used for music and art parties.

Above Ground Hair Studio