Sparrows

New York, NY - 2012

I received a call from a Hedge Fund Director who had tracked me down because he  liked my owls and eagles in Herald Square. He wanted me to replicate a pair of eagles for the gateposts in front of his double wide six story brownstone in the West Village of Manhattan. I think that he was in competition with his neighbors on either side. One had two scaled down seated versions of great danes on their gate posts and the other had a pair of  weird winged griffins. To my mind the eagles would look silly and out of scale, so I proposed a radical notion: instead of competing with his neighbors, why not make a subtle move in the opposite direction: have a bunch of  small cast bronze sparrows seated on his gate posts, window sills and iron fencing. He liked the idea and ordered a dozen cast bronze sparrows. Easy enough for me as each sparrow could be cast from the same mold. Then one day he called in a panic and asked, “How many of the sparrows have you cast?” I told him six and he responded, “There has been a big stock market correction, don’t cast any more!” So now the commission would be half the size. Lesson learned, don’t count your chickens before they hatch.