Kitsch of the day

Way back when I was a New Yawkuh, I used to take frequent road trips up to Maine to visit a good friend (sometimes in the company of up to 10 other friends -- can you say "find a good spot on the floor to sleep"?). It always seemed like an eccentric place, from the strangely exotic Belted Galloway cows in Camden that looked like giant, double-stuffed Oreos to Uncle Billy's Bar-b-que in South Portland, featuring walls covered in velvet Elvii and customer napkin drawings of pigs (ie. Frankenpig).

But my favorite eccentricity was the work of local artist Dan Danielson. I can't find much about him online (and I'm far too lazy to comb through my own photos to scan), but I've managed to dig up a couple good examples. I could be wrong, but I believe Dan was originally a plumber who one day decided he was an artist. He took old boilers and crafted them into, well, anything and everything. I remember his workshop featured a boiler Rapunzel letting down her boiler hair from the roof. Some other memorable works included...

St. George slaying the dragon

Easter Island

I was just back there in September for the first time in 6 years (shame on me!), and I can kick myself for not dragging my fiancée to see Dan's work. Then again, she wasn't terribly impressed by the cows.