by Jack Duren

Sometime in early 2016 I was approached by someone from the Rose Villa Foundation and asked if I could create something to represent the Tin Man from “The Wizard of Oz”.  The Fall Foundation Campaign was centered around that story and the theme, I think, was “The Yellow Brick Road”.  They had started a small display in the South Main Hallway across from Courtesy Services.  I asked what they wanted, and they didn’t know.  I was curious about size and they didn’t seem to care.  At that time, I had a studio space in a gutted cottage where “The Oaks” is now.  I thought about it a while and Googled “The Tin Man” and decided to build one.  There was a piece of board about two feet square in my studio, so I stood in the middle of it and traced around my feet, starting construction with the feet.  My intention was to build a figure with articulated joints that would allow it to change poses.  I found some sheet aluminum and some aluminum vent pipes and went to work.  About the time I got to his torso, I realized that I did not have time to figure out the mechanics for an articulated figure and needed to move faster.  At that point I started using things like aluminum duct tape to hold him together, and secured as much as I could with sheet metal screws.  I also wanted to have a beating heart inside, so I had to allow for a way to do that and made sure I cold open his torso from the shoulders up to get inside and set up a flashing light.  I drew a heart on his chest and drilled a lot of small holes in it to allow the flashing light to be seen, and inserted a bicycle taillight inside, adjusted to a reasonable blinking rate.  I then stood back and looked at it and thought, “OMG what have I done, this is really ugly!  I didn’t know Linda Reed, the Foundation’s Executive Director, very well at that time so I insisted she come over and look at it and decide if it was something she could use.  I was pleased and surprised when she got really excited and started taking pictures and sharing them around.  So the “Tin Man” was born and placed in the hallway.  He became quite a celebrity from then on, donning a Santa hat at Christmas, a green hat for Saint Patrick’s Day and showing up at one of the Spring fundraising banquets dressed as a surfer.  We even added steel wool to his chest because someone thought a surfer of his stature needed chest hair.

After his initial celebrity he was stored in the original Art Incubator Room in the old Rec. Building until it was torn down to make room for Phase Three.  At that point I had no place to store him and put out a notice that he needed a home somewhere.  I was thinking I might be able to donate him to a theater group, or someone who just collected weird things, but Gretchen Holden, who had just moved to Rose Villa, felt he should stay at R.V. She arranged to have different residents host him on their front porch each month.  He finally landed on James and Carol Carthel’s porch just as the Pandemic hit and stayed there until this past May, when he moved to the Pavilion porch.  So, there he stands, somewhat dusty and smudged, with no heart blinking, waiting for his next adventure.