The Library of Lost Inspiration

Sometimes an idea isn't lost. It's simply waiting for the rest of its story.

Some ideas do not fail. They simply stop halfway, sit quietly for a while, and wait for the missing piece to arrive.

That was the case with Wayne’s turtle.

In the backyard, amongst collected steel, unusual shapes, offcuts and half-finished ideas, sat a turtle Wayne had made some time before.

It had character. It had promise.

But it wasn't quite finished.

Wayne didn't force it. Instead, it joined what we have come to call his Library of Lost Inspiration — pieces and ideas that haven't found their final purpose yet.

To somebody else, the backyard might look like an assortment of leftover steel. To Wayne, almost everything has possibility.

A curve gets kept because its shape is interesting. A piece left over from one sculpture might become part of another years later. Something that seems completely unremarkable today can suddenly become exactly what a future artwork needs.

And then Wayne found the base.

He put the two together.

And the turtle suddenly made sense.

It had weight and balance. It had personality. It looked less like two pieces that had been waiting separately and more like they had always belonged together.

We took the finished sculpture to a home show.

It sold almost immediately.

The woman who saw it told us she couldn't leave without it.

And perhaps that's the best part of the story.

Wayne has long believed that he doesn't necessarily know who an artwork belongs to when he creates it.

Sometimes a sculpture might wait for years. Then someone sees it and connects with it in a way that can't really be manufactured or explained.

The artwork has found its owner.

The turtle had been waiting for its base.

Perhaps the base had been waiting for the turtle.

And somewhere out there was a woman who hadn't yet discovered that both of them were waiting for her.