Entertainment - Entertainment News

POSTED: Sunday, Dec. 21, 2008

Blaine sculptor began his work after retirement

Blaine sculptor Bob McDermott once heard a saying that stuck in his head.

It goes: "Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly."

It doesn't mean it's OK to do a bad job.

It does mean you shouldn't worry about how things will turn out when you try something new. Once people are free from fear about results, the theory goes, they are more likely to try new things, and do them well.

McDermott is living proof.

When he retired two decades ago at the age of 56, he decided to pursue something that had always intrigued him but hadn't fit into his busy life. He wanted to try his hand at art.

So he got a degree in it at Western Washington University, spending as much time as he could attending workshops hosted by accomplished sculptors. In the years since, he has quickly left a lasting legacy of three memorable bronze creations in Whatcom County.

-- The Dirty Dan Harris sculpture in Fairhaven.

-- The "Vigil" sculpture in Blaine of two women and a boy awaiting the fishing fleet's return.

-- The monumental bust in Fairhaven of businessman Charles X. Larrabee.

And, if fundraising succeeds, he hopes to sculpt a statue of Phoebe and Holden Judson, pioneer Lynden settlers.

"Bob is truly an artist, which is especially remarkable because he became a sculptor late in life," said Bruce Wolf, the former Blaine City Council member who helped win public support for the Vigil statue. "Bob will forever be remembered in Whatcom County because of his remarkable gift as an artist, but I think his kindness, thoughtfulness and intelligence are even greater."

FOCUSED GUY

McDermott grew up on the East Coast, in Massachusetts and Florida. He served four years on a Navy submarine straight out of high school, then, unsure what to do next, moved to Los Angeles, the land of free college tuition.

He quickly married and, with the first of four kids soon on the way, McDermott got a job and studied engineering on the side to improve his lot. He earned a degree in industrial technology manufacturing - at the age of 40 - and worked ensuring that safety devices for nuclear plants met quality standards when they were built.

McDermott later earned a master's degree in business administration and moved to Hanford, where he was a high-ranking operations manager for Rockwell International.

He retired in 1988 and faced two big decisions - where to live, and what to do.

In a systematic way befitting an engineer, he and his wife, Joan, visited 20 cities rated high as retirement communities. They liked Bellingham and environs the best. Then he dove into art.

DIRTY DAN

McDermott began making small sculptures for exhibits, competitions and commissions. His first chance at a life-size piece came when he met retired Bellingham businessman Brian Griffin, who had led the campaign to build the Fairhaven Village Green.

Griffin was pondering the idea of a public sculpture of Dirty Dan Harris, Fairhaven's founder. Griffin met McDermott through a mutual friend, they talked, and McDermott submitted a small model - called a "maquette" - of his Dirty Dan design.

"It was obvious that he was the man to do the job," Griffin said. "Bob's maquette was spectacular."

McDermott's sculpture presents Harris as a young, hard-working man, relaxed on a bench, a hint of a smile on his face. Based on an earlier piece of a dancer at rest, Dirty Dan's graceful recline conceals the work's well-engineered innards.

A stainless steel support runs through Dirty Dan, Dan's coat and the bench, then deep into the ground, where it's anchored to a concrete block. It gives the solid, sittable work a lightness that's easy to miss unless you look closely.

"The aesthetics drove the engineering," McDermott said.

Installed five years ago, Dirty Dan was an immediate hit, an indivisible part of Fairhaven.

"I have never heard anybody criticize the Dirty Dan statue," Griffin said. "People think he's wonderful."

BLAINE MEMORIAL

The Dirty Dan sculpture was Griffin's idea. The Vigil sculpture was McDermott's.

Gazing at the open waters by Blaine, McDermott thought about the family members who had waited and worried while their menfolk were at sea in search of fish. Those families, he knew, deserve as much recognition as the fishers, themselves.

"I was thinking, 'Where's the memorial?" McDermott said.

He began talking up the idea as an artful addition to Blaine's downtown boardwalk and plazas, then in the planning stages. Bruce Wolf, the Blaine councilman, had been thinking about some sort of artwork for the boardwalk, and was familiar with the Dirty Dan piece.

Wolf learned about McDermott's idea, they talked, and McDermott came back with another clay model, plus life-size clay figures of the heads of the two women and boy he wanted to depict.

Wolf loved the design. An artist drew a rendering of the proposed sculpture and fundraising began in earnest.

McDermott worked on the multi-figure piece in stages so he could meet a tight deadline for installation two years ago. First, he sculpted the three heads. He finished the boy figure next. Then one woman, then the other.

"I never saw the Vigil complete until it was in bronze and installed," McDermott said.

Wolf and his wife, Sandy, traveled to the Tacoma foundry where McDermott's clay figures became bronze.

"My wife and I both cried when we saw the sculpture, because the love exhibited between the mother and her son was startlingly palpable," Wolf recalled.

LARRABEE BUST

When Griffin and other Fairhaven organizers made plans for a Larrabee bust, they immediately thought of McDermott for the job.

Larrabee died in 1914. Working from photos of him, McDermott used his knowledge of anatomy to craft the larger-than-life bust in his likeness.

When the piece was dedicated in October, several Larrabee descendants came to Bellingham for the occasion and to have their picture taken next to the bust.

"They were not only thrilled with what he looked like, they were finding resemblances in their own family members," Griffin said.

JUDSON MEMORIAL

Mary Michaelson hopes her vision of a sculpture honoring the Judsons will become McDermott's next life-size creation in the county.

A volunteer assistant curator at Lynden Pioneer Museum, Michaelson moved to Whatcom County five years ago to be near family. She soon became fascinated by local history, especially about the Judsons.

During her research, she came across a photo of the Judsons taken for their 50th wedding anniversary and thought the image - Phoebe seated, Holden standing behind her - would be a good design for a much-deserved memorial to them by Lynden's new city hall.

The poor economy has slowed donations for the project, but Michaelson has raised about $9,000 of the $70,000 or so needed, and is determined to pursue her dream.

Meanwhile, McDermott stays busy with smaller commissions. He might sculpt something for a daughter's church in California.

He's also been learning to play jazz guitar - he does admit that he sings poorly - and he'd like to write more poetry.

"I think Bob could do anything he sets his mind to," Michaelson said.