Laura Reynolds: Enchanting Animals
What do Axel Rose, Boris Vallejo, Circus Circus and the dean of the University of Maryland have in common? The art of Laura Reynolds. Best known for her sculptures and fantastical mixed-media animals outfitted in lavish, fully accessorized costumes, Reynolds’ professional career began in 1986 when she tied for first place in a scarecrow contest. The store that sponsored the contest purchased her entry — a white creature Reynolds describes as a cross between a deer and a goat. Then the store asked for more. Other retailers soon followed.
Reynolds used her prize money to support her work with wild birds — an effort that began when she was barely out of junior high school. Today, Reynolds divides her time between her art, rescuing wounded birds, and educating children and teens about hawks, owls and other protected species…and talking to Crescent Blues.
Crescent Blues: How do you put one of your clothed animal figures together?
Laura Reynolds: I usually make all the heads and hands at one time. I’ll have about 15 heads and 15 accompanying sets of hands and, if they’re small sculptures, sometimes I’ll do little, bare feet.
I’ll usually set them in a great, big, huge, stainless steel, salad bowl like they use in school cafeterias. It probably holds five or six gallons of liquid. It’s a huge bowl. I throw the heads in the bowl with bubble wrap in the bottom, so I can carry them downstairs or wherever. They all wind up on a shelf.
Then I’ll make the bodies. The bodies are made out of fabric with wire and stuffing. There’s a drawstring in the body that holds the head out, so you can turn the head. The fabric’s usually a really, really heavy duty felt so you don’t have to worry about turning or raveling or tearing. You can stuff it very, very tightly.
I’ve heard people ask, “What kind of wood is the body?” Well, it’s not wood. It’s just really heavily stuffed fabric. And there’s a nice, thick wire in the middle where the arms and tail go so you can move them.
When you make the heads and hands, do you know what the finished creature is going to look like?
Usually not, no. Unless I’m sitting there and say, “Oh, I’m going to make a lion,” or, “I need to make a rabbit.” Or somebody says they want a unicorn or something, and I’ll do that. But usually, I don’t know what it’s going to be.
I start with a foil ball. Then I put a neck on it. Then I cover the whole thing with clay. Then I have this little round thing staring at me. Then I say, “That face sort of has an oval to it. It looks sort of like a bear.” Or it has a flat part where I can put a nose on it and make a dragon.
The only ones I plan ahead (unless I’m doing orders) are humans, because a human has different head shape. It’s egg-shaped. Anything else starts with a round ball.
Where do you get your fabrics? They’re wonderful.
Here and there. Yard sales, flea markets.
And the feathers?
I pick those up here and there — anywhere I can find them.
How did you get started on the little wrapped-wire dragons?
A friend of mine went to an art fair, and she bought a pin — and she paid way too much for it. It was a little bumblebee, an inch and a half or two inches long — a little, round fat bumblebee. She said, “Isn’t that cool?”
I looked at it and thought, this isn’t anything but fabric and wire. So I said, I’m not going to make insects, because there’s already someone making insects, and I’m not going to copy them. But I wanted to see what I could do. I’d like to do a dragon like that.
I did a dragon, and somebody said, “Oooh, I want that.”
I did another dragon. Someone said, “Oooh, I want that.”
So I did 12 dragons, and everyone said, “I want that!”
Now I’m up to my armpits in them.
Do you have a season of the year that you do art, or do you do it all the time?
All the time.
When did you start painting and creating collages?
I’ve always done that. In between the sculptures, I kind of doodle.
People automatically assume you must do preliminary drawings for the sculptures. But I don’t. I’ve never done a preliminary drawing and done a sculpture from it.
I’ve done sculptures from other people’s drawings. Somebody else can hand me drawings and say, “Can you make this character for me? I need it 12 inches tall.”
I can do that. But I don’t make my own drawing and then do a sculpture from it.
What was the first convention you went to?
It was a convention called Rivercon in Louisville, Kentucky. They no longer have it. After 25 years, they retired it. By the way, the same group of people who ran Rivercon now have a new convention called Conglomeration. It’s a nice one. It’s pretty small. It’s also in Louisville.
What was the reaction to your stuff at your first Rivercon?
I sold it — quite a bit of it. That was 12-15 years ago.
How many conventions do you do in an average year?
Four or five…. I do MarCon. It’s a really good one. I do Millennicon in Cincinnati. It’s a smallish one, but a lot of people go for the art. Balticon, I’ve done, but I don’t know if we’re going to do it this year. The problem with Balticon is that it’s up north in the winter, and it’s really not fun to go through those mountains. WindyCon, we’ve done. That’s in Chicago. That’s a good one.
Now you’re painting on fabric, as well. You don’t see that often at a con.
If somebody wants a t-shirt, I’ll do them. But I don’t have an airbrush. I do them by hand. So they take a long time.
Is there any medium you haven’t worked in that you’d like to try?
Yes, I want to work in metal. I’d like to use a plasma torch and do cutting and dyeing. I’d love to do bronze, but it’s very expensive.
Is that why you haven’t tried it so far?
It’s too expensive unless you have your own foundry, which I don’t want to do. The though of me standing around in an asbestos suit with a pot of molten metal just leaves me shivering.
If I go to a foundry and work with somebody there, it’s about $45 an hour to use the facilities. A small piece of sculpture would probably cost me $3,000 to $5,000 just for the one. I know there are people who do that, but for me it would be really ridiculous. I need to find someplace like a university or someone who has their own foundry who’ll say, “Oh sure. Come on in.” There are people like that out there. I just haven’t found one yet.
With all the art you create, you do all the work yourself, from the sculpting to the sewing and decorating. Does that include making the stands?
Everything. I do cut my own bases.
How does your day start? What’s a typical day?
I don’t have a schedule. Today, I might do four [sculptures]. Tomorrow, I might not be home. Wednesday, I might have to go to three schools with the birds.
Let’s talk about that a minute. I understand you rescue wounded birds.
Right. Hawks, owls, things like that.
How did you get started taking care of wild birds?
I have no idea. It sounds like a cop-out, but I really don’t. I just wanted to do it, and I did it. There are a lot of things you have to go through. You have to get permits, you have to take tests, you have to build cages.
How old were you when you first started doing this?
Fourteen.
Wasn’t it hard to do something like that so young?
It was. The minimum age for having a permit is 16. So my parents had to sign a letter saying it was all right with them. It caused a big sensation, because no one else that young was doing it at the time.
Now you’re educating other young people about them. Where do you conduct your school programs — Lexington?
Actually, all over Kentucky. I take them everywhere. I’ve been all the way from western Kentucky to the West Virginia border.
Do you do that all by yourself or do you have help?
Myself and my mother. We live in the same house. We have three generations of people living in the same house. My grandmother lives there too.
What does she think about the critters?
She likes them.
Oh good.
She nicknames the dragons. Usually, I’ll line them up on the couch at night, because I have to wait for the glue to dry before I put them away. And she’ll say, “Oh, look, the little rats are out.”
Especially, if I haven’t put the wings on them — they look like little lizards. Like little alligators hatched all over the house.
What’s been your biggest sale so far?
I sold two pieces at Philcon. Philcon is a con I’ve only gone to once, but it’s a fabulous con too. Usually the cons up north are really good, because the galleries come out looking for pieces. I sold about $8,000.
…I think it was either Philcon or Balticon. I’ve sold a lot at both of them, because the gallery owners come. They won’t even look at the sales tag. They’ll just talk to their assistant and go, “I want this one, this one, this one and this one.” Then their people will just take the bid sheet and go with them. Shocks the living daylights out of me.
Your work is displayed in the Atlanta Art Mart.
Those are mostly Christmas ornaments. By Christmas ornaments, I don’t mean Santa and his elves. I sell undersea-themed ornaments, because that’s a big market right now: [Finding] Nemo and all that, pudgy mermaids, fishes with big lips and high heels. All sorts of crazy stuff like that. There are hundreds and hundreds of stores that sell these things.
I know you have some of your larger dragons made overseas. Do you do a lot of overseas sales?
Not of fantasy [pieces]. The Under the Sea ornaments are all made overseas. We actually have to go to the factory and sit down with them and say, “No, not that pink. I want this pink.” You have to show them what you want, but they do a fabulous job with the sculpting. A lot of time I just do a nice detail drawing, and they can actually do the sculpting from that. You just have to make sure they know what the back looks like.
You have given them multiple views.
Sometimes you do. Some of the factories are really good. There’s one factory in China where I can give them a front-view line drawing, and they’ll get the back. They really understand it. But it’s a different culture. Every now and then they’ll look at something and go: “What is that?”
I remember one time we did a chihuahua in a sombrero, and I just did a front view. Well, they had never seen a Mexican hat, and I hadn’t thought of that. When the person came back with the model, the hat was all wrong. The [modeler] had never seen a picture of a sombrero. Oh well, you live and learn.
Do you enjoy traveling to China?
It’s a long ride. It’s a neat place, but it’s a long ride.
What advice do you give the kids in the classes you teach?
I’ve never taught art. I only work with the birds.
What do you teach them about the birds?
We tell them what the bird is, where you find it. They have questions. What does it eat? How big is it? They come out with these cute little questions, like if you put this bird and that bird together, which one is going to come out fighting? Which one is going to be well-fed? Which one is a power flyer? So we tell them. Usually, they are very nice questions.
We tell them about protected species, why you should never take them out of the nest, why you shouldn’t be shooting at them. If your mom or dad hit them with a car, try to call somebody. Don’t take the bird home and make a pet out of it.
Most of the birds you work with wouldn’t respond well to being pets.
No.
What kind of advice would you give to an aspiring artist who wanted to do something like this?
[in a high, thin voice]: Dooooooon’t.
I’ve never submitted a portfolio, but maybe I should sit down sometime and try to make one. People want portfolios today.
At this point I don’t do digital. I have a computer, but it’s sitting on a shelf somewhere collecting dust for about three years. It was a freebie, and I still haven’t gotten around to hooking the thing up.
But a lot of people are on the Internet. I don’t do illustrations that much. But people who deal in book illustrations and things like that want you to have stuff on disk. They won’t even look at submissions that come in a box anymore. You have to show them you’re on a Web site. Then they can download the art for themselves. So find somebody to put your art on the Internet for you if you want to send it to publishers.
How do you submit to a juried convention art show if you don’t submit it digitally?
DragonCon 2003 [was] the only [DragonCon] I’ve been to that’s been juried. Luckily, I’d been coming here since before they stood up the jury process, and they knew me. They had already seen the work. But usually, if my work has to be juried, I’ll send a few photos in an envelope. I go to a copy shop and make a dollar copy with four or five photos on one sheet of paper.
This question has an ulterior motive. In case none of my photos turnout, I want to make sure I can call you and say, “Help!”
If I have any lying around. Half the stuff I’ve made I have no documentation for at all. I sell it before I get a photo done.
There are several folks taking pictures for the magazine this time, so between us, we should be able to get something.
You’re welcome to take a picture if you want. I’ve got a camera too, and I’m going to try to get a picture of my display…
…Before it’s all gone. Strange people keep coming up and saying, “He’s coming home with me.”
That happens quite a bit. I’ll be setting up and people say, “Oooh, what’s that one?” And I say, “Here, I’ll sell it to you before I put up the bid sheet.”
The first year I ever came to DragonCon it was over in the InForum. That was a pretty interesting place — when they had the dealers room and art show in one big room. I had used one of the InForum’s gigantic dolly carts to move all my stuff. (I didn’t have as much stuff then.)
We had all the dragon pins in a big box with the top off. I couldn’t get them to the room. I got on the freight elevator; I sold three. I was going from the freight elevator to the room in the InForum; I sold three or four more. I was selling them off the cart. I think by the time the con started Friday morning I had two left. I brought about fifty.
What’s the biggest sculpture you ever made?
These are quite small ones. I’ve been doing a lot more small ones, because there tends to be more demand for pieces between $75 and $200 — in that size range. I have a few bigger ones, mainly for display. People will buy them — especially at DragonCon, we sell quite a few.
The biggest piece I ever did was for a hotel in Florida. The piece is seven feet tall. It’s the mascot of a hotel called the Doubletree Castle. It’s a dragon. He’s got a cape that takes 14 yards of fabric.
In fact, the hotel wanted two capes. I had to do a winter cape and a summer cape. The summer cape is teal blue with an iridescent lining. The winter cape is green velvet with a gold lining and a fur collar.
[Carol Reynolds (the artist’s mother): And Axel Rose bought one.]
Yeah, he has a good-sized piece. I’m just glad he liked it and didn’t buy it to squish it on a video. It was on a video. I don’t remember which one, but I do remember seeing it.
The piece was in a store in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. The lady in the store buys a lot of my things and sells them there. One night someone called and said Axel Rose wanted to come to the store. She went, “Yeah, right.”
I think it was three in the morning when they called her house and said Rose wanted to shop in the store. She thought, “This is a crank call.” But she followed up on it anyway. Sure enough, it was him. He wanted to come in when the store was closed. He ended up buying a dragon.
[Editor’s note: Two of Laura Reynolds’ dragons can be seen in the Expedia.com virtual tour of the lobby of the Doubletree Castle in Orlando, Florida.]
Teri Smith & Jean Marie Ward