Happy Customers Make for Happy Artists

                                Rebecca, one of the owners of the Cycling Salamander Gallery, wrote me a nice note this morning about how the piece I did for them has been received...

"People love the salamander.  A lady said yesterday that that was the piece that she most wanted to take home and when I asked these ladies where their husbands went, they said- oh they are out taking a look at the cycling salamander.  So I think that the sculpture is really going to help with our name recognition."

In fact, it was kind of funny on the day of of the install/unveiling to overhear two people saying, separately, "Oh, so that's why they call it the Cycling Salamander!" Some day I may get less cheerful email from Rebecca saying that the sculpture now overshadows the gallery and they're tired of hearing about how cool it is...yeah, right.

For those of you who wonder how Chet & Rebecca came up with the name, I asked. They both liked cycling & salamanders... it's that simple. Also they had noticed that many, many galleries in this region have some kind of animal name (Trick Dog, Twisted Fish, Blue Heron, etc).

One other last note about the piece: It turns out that the bike I was given to build the sculpture around was Rebecca's childhood bike, which she has had all these years. Actually, it was a hand-me-down from her brother, but it is the bike she learned to ride on. I thought that was pretty cool.