There's Snow Business Like Art

For many years I used to spend most nights hanging out/working at my friend Denny's shop at the Fenpro in Ballard. There was a constant flow of very entertaining people who would stop in for a whisky or to get something made, or usually, both. If you needed something fixed or fabricated, it would usually cost you a bottle of bourbon. 

One guy that came by a lot was Darryl. He used to be a sculptor and Denny helped him out a lot when they both had shops over at the Foundry in Fremont. Darryl was an amazing artist. He did the sculpture of the girl holding origami birds over by the University Bridge and a series of rock and roll legends including John Lennon and Jimi Hendrix. The statue of Jimi is up on Broadway on Capitol Hill.

Darryl graduated with a degree in art history and is the most talented artist I have ever known. But he absolutely hated the business of art. Some artists love selling themselves and scoring big commissions but he hated it. All he wanted to do was make stuff but that's not how things work so he got a job for many years as a security guard. He recently retired and is now painting custom motorcycle tanks, which makes him happy. 

One thing that he was always proud of was how nobody ever fucked with his statue of Jimi. Even though it had some very delicate parts. Nobody ever snapped off any of the tuning pegs and he saw that as a sign of respect for the work. 

Nobody respected Darryl more than Denny. But if Denny were still here I would have sworn he was the one who put a snowman's head on Jimi a couple days ago.