Sarah Brown
When Lawrence Paquin gets bored, he can be found in his garage, welding bronze to copper, painting metal with colorful consideration, and pounding his work while sitting on the ground “like a caveman,” but the finished artwork is fit for a gallery.
In fact, Paquin recently joined the Brownsville Art Association and placed many of his pieces for sale on display there, and all his immediate neighbors own at least one piece of Paquin art.
The Sweet Home metal artist creates works reminiscent of his life on the East and West coasts. Colorful dolphin fish, Kokanee salmon, starfish and even a moray eel are depicted on found driftwood, creating an underwater scene in which one can almost hear the ocean waves.
Paquin, who’s closing in on 72, moved to Sweet Home three years ago with his partner, Tanya Bond, a Lebanon native. He said they moved to the area from Florida to be closer to Bond’s parents, but admitted weather also played a role in their decision.
“It’s getting real hot in Florida,” he said. “Real hot.”
The couple would’ve preferred to live on the coast in Newport, but are concerned about the health risks associated with microscopic plastic beads blowing off the beach, he said. That’s a fitting concern for a couple who came out of the hippie era and use homemade wooden utensils to eat their food.
They’re not new to Oregon, however. The two lived on the beaches of both Oregon and Florida throughout their lifetime, and Paquin said they loved their time living on Agate Beach.
Most of the driftwood he uses in his art today comes from Florida and Oregon. He appreciates the mangrove and cedar wood that add character to his underwater creatures made from copper sheets and bronze rods.
Paquin learned art and metal working at Mount Hood Community College in the ’70s. He started expressing his artistic passion in the ’80s, and in his lifetime has used metal to create jewelry, bird feeders, fountains and decorative art, but has also built planes, ships and other machinery.
He worked for Matthew’s Marine Systems and Aircraft Precision, and worked with the Department of Energy in Florida, where he built nuclear reactor cores and MX missile guidance systems.
“Every place I’ve been at has been really high-tech,” he said. “I jumped out of it in the early ’90s and have been on my own ever since.”
In the ’90s, Paquin made and sold fountains for the Wood Gallery on the Newport Bayfront.
“It was a first class gallery, and I got in because I was doing fountains,” he said.
He didn’t think the position would require too much time.
“Who’s going to be rushing in here to buy fountains?” he thought to himself. “And damn if they weren’t. It was blowing my mind.”
Paquin and Bond, who’s also an artist in her own right, earned their living selling their creations at art shows.
“We were going to Florida in the winter, doing shows, and coming back to Oregon in the summer. Three years in a row we did that, ’til we were worn out,” he said.
When Paquin and Bond moved to Sweet Home in 2015, he considered himself officially retired from the hobby.
“The rat race of doing art shows, the crappy spaces you get, it’s too much stress for me. I’m done with it,” he said.
He kept for himself his torch, copper sheets and some better driftwood, but didn’t touch them until a year and a half ago.
“I just got so bored doing nothing retired. In Florida, we had 10 acres, lots to do there. Here, I’ve got this little postage stamp lot, so I just picked it back up and started doing it.”
Tinkering with his favorite medium and sharing his art with neighbors keeps him occupied now, he said.
“We don’t have TV, we don’t have a computer, we don’t have any of that crap.”
Sometimes people approach him to do something more custom-made, such as two birds and musical notes on a branch to depict family members Wren and Melody. Custom orders put pressure on Paquin to make a piece that will be appreciated, but it forces him to think hard, he said.
“It keeps my brain working when I have to do something for someone.”
Out of his garage, Paquin will sell his wall art for $20 to $100, but would require more if someone wanted to buy any three-dimensional pieces.
“Find somebody who does this, or even knows how to do it,” he said of his 3-D water birds. “This is nothing easy, I’ll tell ya. This is very difficult to build one of these.”
Paquin believes metalwork like his is a dying art, and he hopes he can pass on his knowledge to someone some day.
Meanwhile, he’ll continue building works of art that come from decades of experience, and selling them to passersby. He’ll make modern-attractive weather stations, birds on branches, underwater scenes, and maybe the occasional water fountain.
It’s clear Paquin loves water. He hopes some day he can trade his “postage stamp lot” for something a little wetter.
“I’d like to find some place on the water, whether it’s a creek or a river or something, to at least watch the water go by and hear it.”
For more information, contact Lawrence at (541) 409-1917.