Our Dinosaur

Meet "FERN" the Fiddlehead Dinosaur!

Hey!.... Thanks for being interested in our dinosaur! Here's some more photos of the process - start to finish - and the story behind the sculpture...

dino 2

Louisa, age 12 (in 2010), helping me weld the dino.

I (Dr. Lynda) grew up on a farm with no end to the need for equipment repairs. Welding was as common as changing a tire. Once we settled here in Vermont, I got interested in the less practical possibilities of that skill... and I've been welding large metal sculptures for 15 years now. I learned to weld at our local high school's adult evening courses at BFA. The classes were for serious welders, but even on the first night (when I was supposed to be practicing my "beads") I made a crow out of the scraps. My instructor just probably held his nose and decided he must humor me for the duration.

Since then I have done over 40 sculpture. All from metal found in the junk yards, farms, and sheds of my rural Vermont. The metal pieces "tell me" what they should become. I know it sounds spooky, but that's the best way for me to describe it.

For instance, with this dinosaur, I found the spines and the back bone pieces on the same day in the junk yard and I knew these pieces HAD to be a Stegosaurus. I eventually found the pieces for the legs that were just the right scale and the whole pile sat in my barn for 10 years, until recently, when Louisa said she would help me put it together. It took us about 4 hours to prepare and 11 hours to weld.

The pictures to follow will give you a sense of the fun we had with this over-night art project. Check them out and it may inspire a name to bubble up from your imagination!...

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Here's the process...

	Here's Louisa (my daughter - age 12) standing in the yard at the office, before we started the project. She learned to weld this summer (2010) and had started by helping me make a family of 5 life-sized triceratops sculptures for our garden.
	Dad (Dr. Chuck) and brother Jens drive up with a trailer full of twelve hundred pounds of steel from the junk yard.
	Dr. Chuck used our tractor to place 4, three hundred pound boulders under the legs of the dino, and we welded the legs around the boulders.... so the dino is unlikely to "walk off" to bother the neighbors.
	Here we have welded the back bone and the neck is attached with truck springs so the head (and tail) will move in the breeze.
	e start the labor of attaching all the spines

	Louisa welds the spines on the neck and then....
	She starts to weld up the face, jaw and teeth. (Louisa designed the head - a very fetching smile, if I do say so myself!... and I know my smiles! ha)
	Here we are at the finish... very hot,.. very tired, and proud of this unique Mother/Daughter 4th of July project! (Landscaping by Dr. Chuck and Jens)
	Smile for the camera dino!