Flock Duluth was born of my wife’s love of eclectic yard art. One of the first pieces she acquired was a found metal sculpture that had a radiator fan for a tail. She called the thing a “rooster”. The theft of that sculpture led to my creating others.

I never thought of this as more than a minor hobby. Then one day I was looking at an old bowling pin I’d gotten and was inspired. That pin became a seagull. People that saw it, liked it. One neighbor said “it’s so real, I want to shoo it off the lawn”.

It turns out bowling pins get replaced. I could keep them out of landfills and make folk art. Then I discovered I could extend the neck and make herons or flamingos. That, in addition to my welded creations, formed the basis of Flock Duluth. While a group of seagulls is a colony, a group of birds is a flock. So, I am saved from grammatical error by a technicality. Plus, I like the sound of Flock Duluth. Side note: my wife only supported the name when I said Flock would be written in bowling pin bird letters.

In my experience, seagulls have been many things - from the hero Jonathan Livingston Seagull to flying rats and popcorn thieves. The gulls of Canal Park in Duluth, MN, on the shores of Lake Superior, hold a special place in my heart. When my daughters were very young I would buy outdated bread and we would go feed the seagulls. Imagine the joy of a couple of preschool girls gathering a hundred gulls or more with a handout of bread scattered on the lawn, then chasing them away while giggling joyously. Rinse, repeat. We’d spend an hour doing that. Giggling happy children is an elixir for most anything the day has thrown at me.

Each creation is unique. They are all hand painted with brush or spray can or both. One thing about the gulls that struck me is they are pretty black and white (and gray). So, the herons and flamingos were born. Also, like Jonathan Livingston Seagull, I also imagined gulls that didn’t quite fit in and created oddly colored birds I call “Hippie Seagulls”. I occasionally ask people to be guest artists and paint a bird. It may be a seagull and it may not. It might be colored like another species and it might be colored like a Seuss or Disney or Looney Tunes creation.

Hopefully you will enjoy my whimsical creations half as much as I enjoy making them.

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