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RAWR!

Yesterday, my dad and I only made it to one place, but it was TOTALLY worth it. Located in the middle of nowhere, in Marshfield, Wisconsin lives a couple named Clyde and Nancy… and their odd collection of metal friends at Jurustic Park.

The picture above is one of the many metal creatures Clyde has created. As we made our way through his garden of friends, Clyde approached us warning that we could only take pictures if we promised not to scare the creatures away – he didn’t want a stampede. He proceeded to give us a tour of his garden, and had quite the schtick to go with it.

He was a riot. He had names for each of his creatures, including the genus names. There were complete stories/descriptions behind the creations. It was absolutely amazing. Below are a couple more of his creations.





His wife is also an artist, but her specialty is glass and knitting. She does all sorts of blown glass – ornaments, buttons, jewelry, and critters – but also does knitting from scratch. She has a friend she buys sheep’s wool from, spins it, dies it, and knits is. She’s extremely talented, and a total sweetheart. The two of them were two of the coolest people, and I feel honored to have gotten to experience their artwork. One of the best stories we heard was one Nancy told to us. She said she had a group of 5th graders at Jurustic Park, and when they got back to school they were to draw their favorite creature and write a story about it. Clyde and Nancy received this amazing card (which they had hanging on their wall) made of some of the drawings, and the students sent them their stories which she kept in a scrap book. SO FUN! How cute! She said they were all extremely creative, and some of their drawings were amazing. She also had a poster up of drawings that a group of mentally challenged people had done that were brilliant. Some of the drawings were so good – you would have never guessed that the artist struggled mentally. My heart was so happy to see such great artwork with such awesome stories attached to them.

It was so fun to be in a place where imagination
and creativity run wild.