PLACEMAKING

Bynum, North Carolina cannot be called a city - hardly even a town! Bynum is about 10 miles south of Chapel Hill.  There’s a church in Bynum and a general store. The population?  About 300.  It’s where Clyde Jones lives.

Clyde is 73 years old and worked in a saw mill which accounts for his missing finger.  In his spare time he began constructing animals - “critters” he calls them - out of post sized logs. These logs are not whittled, chain sawed or otherwise messed with. They are quickly nailed together into big-eared dogs, long-necked giraffes and strange composite alien animals - a human once in awhile.  Some have baseball eyes and plastic flower noses and others, real horse saddles or any part thereof.  All are painted and most are dusted in glitter.  Clyde likes glitter. 

Once, you could hardly walk through the zoo in Clyde’s yard. So he began “loaning” animals to all his neighbors. Now nearly every one of the 75 or so houses in Bynum has at least one animal in its garden; the loanees must agree not to sell any of the menagerie. And since wooden animals are everywhere, the traffic signs are also hand-made wood - cut outs of turtles, painted with spots and stripes with words like “Drive Like a Turtle.”  (I don't know for sure if Clyde made the signs.)

It’s easy to find the house where Clyde lives. It’s the one that’s covered in painted flowers and animals. Even the chimney - even the roof! - sports flying fish, snaky eels, and wingless birds.  One whole side of his house is covered in a painted pod of whales, a sight seldom seen anywhere near Bynum. The porch is papered with letters and post cards from admirers and magazine and newspaper articles all about Clyde. 

Clyde is famous.

As recently as the late 1970s Clyde’s form of art was a big head scratcher. Academics hardly knew what to label these people who were formally untrained but created raw, spontaneous  paintings and objects. In 1980, the Corcoran Gallery curated and installed the seminal exhibit “Black Folk Art in American: 1930 - 1980.”  It was followed by a string of thoughtfully curated exhibitions in university galleries and museums like the American Folk Art Museum and the Smithsonian Institute.

Jones’ “Haw Creek Critters” have been exhibited in these and other venues all over the world. But he still gets a kick out of visitors driving off the main highway to find him and while he can’t walk around so well anymore, he’s often outside on his only luxury: a customized riding lawn mower festooned with plastic snakes.

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THE REST OF THE STORY    Clearly, Bynum, North Carolina is far from being a tourist mecca but it’s curious that the state has now widened and improved the roads leading to Bynum and the little crossroads that barely had a name, is clearly marked on maps leading out of N.C.’s Research Triangle.  I call this the power of Art in Placemaking.

ONE SIDE OF CLYDE'S HOUSE

A NEIGHBOR

ANOTHER NEIGHBOR - AND MOST OF THE ANIMALS  ARE 'LIGHTED'

THE FRONT OF CLYDE'S HOUSE

IN CASE YOU MISS HIM, THAT'S SANTA IN THE CANOE