Demons come and demons go
So on December 23, the wind howled and raged and decided to smash the Devil of Lebanon Street to the ground. Somewhere someone way too into the Bible breathed a sigh of relief.
I was sitting on the couch, most likely watching something with explosions, when I heard the crash. I opened the front door and there it was, lying prone on the ground. Both horns and one wing broke off, along with a couple of fingers. The arm joints, never the strongest part of the design, had loosened to the point where it was better to just rebuild them.
I entertained for a hot minute the idea of putting a true revision into the Devil - build the arms using the style I developed with the Demon Bear (he survived the gale force winds, FYI) - but in the end opted to keep the same look. I’ll be honest - part of it was just laziness. I knew I could knock off two arms and hands in a weekend, whereas building beefier arms would also necessitate beefier legs and that was a whole lot of extra beef for the last week of the year, even if global warming was giving me the opportunity to work outside.
The other part was keeping true to what I build in October of 2019. Sure, thicker arms and legs would only improve the look, but if I’m going to do that, I’ll do it with the next sculpture (also, maybe a more dynamic stance). The Devil of Lebanon Street was the second iteration of a lark and should remain as such. I’m not going to George Lucas these things into something unrecognizable (but I will have better joint connections).
But while it was a quintessential “I’m going to make this up as I go along” project, I was impressed by how well it held up overall. There was no damage to the skull or torso and you could argue the parts that did break did so because I hadn’t put enough thought into how Piece A would connect to Piece B (case in point - the PVC fingers were attached to the hands with too-small dowels supplemented with what looked to be either toothpicks or even smaller dowels).
With my daughter’s assistance, I rebuilt the arms using the original pieces as templates. As this was his second repair (the first was when the metal hangers used to attach the wings to the back corroded back in 2021), I decided his arms did deserve a little definition, so I practiced with the angle grinder. He got himself a fresh coat of paint as well. Spa day, as it were. His horns are blazingly white, and they kind of glow in the early morning.
What he won’t get is a return to the front yard. After three years and plenty of local infamy, he’s going to hang out in the back garden so I can look at him when hanging out on the patio. I’ve got a couple of cool ideas for new stuff, and I’d like to highlight the new. Plus, by switching things up, it will help me figure out when Google maps updates the street view.
