Visiting the Family Stenzel

Mr. Stenzel lives down the road from us in Roberts Creek, B.C. I take it to be Mr. Stenzel because there is a fancy welded metal sign at the end of his driveway that says ‘Family Stenzel.’ The reason you might notice this when you walk by is that next to the sign is a four-foot heron made of old chain saw blades. Everything that goes to make up this heron is something else: screwdrivers, threaded rods, wrenches, nails, chains, pipe: all that metal stuff that collects in the basement of a handyman and that there is never any way to organize. Mr. Stenzel has organized all this material by re-organizing it into objects. Mostly but not exclusively birds. There are metal birds in real trees, and real birds AND metal birds in metal trees, but they all look like real birds in real trees from a distance.

Mr. Stenzel and his family live in a regular-sized house on a maybe ½-1 acre lot that is covered with Douglas firs, hemlocks, and cedars, which are the three main evergreen trees here, but even more it is covered with his metal sculptures. As a result, it is really hard to take pictures of any of the perhaps 250 objects that are arranged around in his yard because they all appear on a darkened stage, even when it is a pretty sunny day. But there are not just birds. There are warriors and acrobats and elves and jousters and kings and queens and mushrooms and pretty much anything you could think of.

Unlike the metal worker couple in Sebastopol, Mr. Stenzel has, more or less, all his work on display in his own yard, but he, too is happy to have guests. There are pathways around the yard so anybody can walk in and around and get a better look at the pieces. He does have them for sale occasionally at local art shows. And we own one of his pieces. It is the guard dog in the fourth picture.

That came about because Ed had been gathering up the usual metal stuff in our basement and he made a particularly nice selection of unusual pieces and took them down to Mr. Stenzel a few weeks after he had given us a guided tour of the yard. Some months later, we were back for another visit, and Mr. Stenzel gave us the dog, which included some of our parts.

Yet some months later, we were walking by a thrift shop late in the evening when the manager came out to dump some things and, upon seeing us, asked us if we would be interested in a overhead cam cylinder head. (We must have looked like the kind of people that would be out looking for used car engine parts on a late Friday evening.) We took it to Mr. Stenzel, of course, and he made a wonderful scuba diver figure out of it, with the part as the upper torso and tank. I didn’t see it in the yard today, so he may have sold that one. I was thinking about buying it, but never quite got around to it.

Visiting Mr. Stenzel’s yard: that’s what life should be more about and it should be a good deal less about politics, and wiretapping, and invading other people’s yards and countries. More of his very crowded yard here