Patrick & Brigette...Sebastapol treasures

One of my favorite things to do, especially when I have had a really extraordinarily horrible day, week, or moment, is to drive.  Just drive.  Drive and get into that headspace where you can separate yourself from the world, and within the interior of your car, sift out insignificant problems from the real issue at hand and save the world- at least yours- with one genius idea and a little inspiration.

Inspiration is easy to find on the road....little roadside cafes with old, rusted Chevys and wooden signs advertising "Fried Pie"....beautifully detailed, stone-walled wineries with gardens for picnics and huge iron gates....and sometimes, if you have a great friend who can lead the way through backroads to true treasure, examples of local, homegrown and creative art.

Off of the road well traveled, and into the heart of downtown Sebastapol, you are bound to find clues that this isn't just any little town.  One such clue?...a giant metal Holstein cow, made of what appears to be bits and pieces of scrap metal and recycled parts, stands guard in the field of a local dairy.

Next clue?...a fisherman, rusty parts and all, sits atop a giant equally rusty fish with hubcap eyeballs....Local quaintness is not out of place in a town with organic coffeeshops and herb farms galore.  But there's more.

My musey-type friend, OF COURSE, had the answer.  On a lazy Sunday afternoon, he leads me and my daughters on a little neighborhood drive, down Florence Avenue, where on almost every lawn, metal sculptures beg for you to drive 2 miles an hour and simply admire the thoughtfulness of craft and design.

Every yard filled with metal sculptures...brightly painted examples of folk art made from recycle/reused/reinvented junk and turned into caricatures of animals, people and even dinosaurs, embraced in the yards of the neighborhood where local artists Patrick Amiot and Brigette Laurent live. 

Patrick Amiot & Brigette Laurent

Amidst these charming 1940s-style bungalow homes, the house with a minimum of  at least 7 sculptures (at least the ones that I can see from my car window) HAD to be the artists-in-residence....brochures waited for me to grab, self-serve style, at the front of their house-so of course I did- and that's where information on the artists and their web site was found.
http://www.patrickamiot.com/index.html

To find inspiration in discarded and old pieces of junkyard-bound materials is unique, and then to have a wife and creative partner that then takes the sculptures and paints them in bright-kitschy and novel ways that brings out the character in the larger than life and whimsical pieces is endearing.

"The whole purpose of my work is to glorify these objects, because they have their own spirit," Amiot enthuses. "When a hubcap has traveled on a truck for millions of miles, and has seen the prairies in the winter and the hot summer asphalt, when it's done traveling with that truck and finds itself in the scrap yard and I find it, I kind of like to use that. This hubcap, or whatever piece of metal, from the day it was manufactured until now, has an important history. And I like to think the spirit of all these things lived incredible lives. If they could talk to you, they could tell amazing stories. That's something I don't want to hide." Patrick Amiot

Patrick, once a gallery ceramicist, inspired by the everyday and the spirit that lies within it then takes home the sculptures and lets his talented wife, Brigette then bring out the rest of the character from there.

The two are not only known for their sculptures on Florence street, they are known in the community for their giving.  As a fund raiser for local schools, Patrick and Brigette made a calender of the sculptures and local-wonder-moms then sold them to raise over a quarter million dollars.

This kind of inspiration where junk can be lovingly crafted and designed into little  abstract personalities that bring joy into a neighborhood and gives beyond the smiles of the community is well worth witnessing, and makes a roadtrip on a Sunday afternoon even more satisfying  beyond the drive itself.