"Crazy John" invited us out to this property a coupla months ago, and we finally took him up on his offer last week. John and his wife, Kay, gave us a tour of their house & property out by Jewel, OR... some fascinating stuff. The yard is full of John's earlier metal works, as well as heaps of scrap metal for new projects. And the house... jam-packed with something like 75+ metal sculptures, some miniature (little muppet/gnome-like metal figures playing music guitars, riding in cars & motorcycles, sitting under crystals & mushrooms), some not so miniature (5-ft-tall pirate ships, patches of metal vines, castles growing impossibly tall beanpole turrets). The house itself is another story... John built the 2nd & 3rd story himself (and apparently clashed with the county building inspector over permits, or the lack thereof)... the 2nd story is accessed via a trapdoor with built-in ladder that pulls down from the ceiling... a step-ladder from the 2nd floor leads up to the 3rd story, a single room with a pointed roof, containing: a large window that looks out onto the river that borders the back of the property, and one giant cushion where John sits & reads. His welding area is a sort of patio deck built next to a huge tree that the house is nestled under... all in all, a pretty magical, fairy-tale house. I could easily see this being in Chris Smith's Home Movie.

 

You could easily write a book about John's life story... in fact, I wish someone would. He started out in the navy, working on submarines; later, he was involved in massive metal installations in Portland; and now he pretty much works on whatever he pleases (having been declared 'mentally unfit' by the fed gov), making the occasional sculpture sale from the trunk of his car (which he drives around sporting this hood ornament, catching attention wherever he goes, which his wife calls 'going trolling'). Stories include the tale of his 3-wheeled motorcycle slash metal sculpture on wheels, which, according to John, caused so many accidents in the course of the first 4 days that he drove it that he was ticketed by police for driving a 'dangerous eyesore' and ordered not to take it out on the roads anymore.

 

I'll be posting a few more photos from this adventure, but unfortunately, most of 'em didn't come out... it was too dark in John's house to really capture the sculptures in their 'natural environemnt.' Y'all will just have to pay John a visit yourselves...