CWNews
Man's Fish Smoke
Burd's fish are catching fire
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| Marvin Burd (center) with finned friends Cigar (left) and Cleo (Photo by Scott Sullivan) |
Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly. But Marvin Burd's fish smoke cigars.
Say what?
Burd,
82, of Douglas, does things differently. Where another retiree might
craft gardener's buttocks or other wood art that is, um, indelible,
Burd makes fish that-to the dismay of not only cancer-prevention
advocates but logicians who wonder how an aquatic species can light
up-smoke.
He began as a boy-first at four, then resuming at
81-when Burd began collecting cigar bands, buttons, coins ... all kinds
of things campers left at what is now Allegan County's West Side Park
"next to grandma's house after weekends.
"Grandma bought a
50-foot lot by the beach in 1923 for $300," says Burd, who grew up to
be an accountant. "It might sell for $700,000 today."
He
accounted in Bangkok, Ankara, Istanbul and Tehran, always coming home
to visit family on Lake Michigan. He and his wife, Jean, raised three
sons:
- Stephen, co-owner of Saugatuck Traders clothing store.
- Douglas, who, failing to find a job in commercial art, went to work for the International Monetary Fund.
- Mark, employed by mortgage giant Fannie Mae.
"My younger sons have had interesting times in Washington, D.C., lately," their father says.
After
Jean died two years ago. Burd moved to Harbours Senior Apartments and
started to fish around for new pastimes. Long-standing ones include
sitting down to play bridge and walking three miles, using Nordic
poles, to the Saugatuck post office every day.
A visit to Water
Street Gallery in Douglas last year introduced Burd, at 81, to folk-art
sculptures by "world-famous fish-maker" Jesse Hickman.
"He puts antlers and really-fanciful things on
his sculptures," Burd says. "Mine tend to be more realistic. I'm not
trying to copy him, just have fun."
His first effort, "Chloe,"
was made from a naturally-curved three-foot branch broken off a tree.
Fish two, "Cleo," was fashioned from flat driftwood.
"They're from beech or things I find on the beach," Burd says.
He
saws, sands and drills wood to the shape he wants, attaches metal or
wooden "fins," adorns, paints, decoupages and shellacks his creations
toward culmination.
"I'm always looking for fish eyes; porcelain doorknobs, buttons, bottle caps, costume jewelry ..." Burd says.
His
fourth fish, "Winston," boasted a head, tail and stripes fashioned from
cigar bands, plus teeth chomping on a stogie. Fish five, "Lambert,"
sports a bottle of Kalik beer from Abocos, the Bahamas, inlaid into a
torso hole and sealed by Mighty Putty.
Burd's most-recent
creation, "Cigar," is his magnum opus, carved into a curve ("much more
realistic and time-consuming"), completely covered with cigar bands and
boasting teeth (made of dowels stuck in a pencil sharpener) chewing on
a stogie (an unsharpened, painted dowel) "I stuck in as you were
arriving here," he says.
You love fishing? we venture.
"Not really," Burd says. "I give them 15 minutes to bite. If they don't, I'm done."
Cigars?
"I smoke one a day. My sons got me started. They mail their cigar bands to me."
You figure to get rich selling these?
"I
don't care if they sell or not," says Burd, who has three fish showing
at You'nique Gallery. "It's just something to do that's fun for me."
He figures he spent close to 40 hours making "Cigar" and may spend at least as long on his next one.
"I just got another block of beech wood: four by four inches by three feet long," Burd says. "I'm planning to make him curved."
After that?
"The sea is the limit. We will see," Burd says.
