home

forecast weather station weather station
Duck Pond Dragon Out For Repairs
A Refit From Bottom To Top
May 25, 2012

F
or the first time in 8 years, Oriental’s Duck Pond is dragon-less. The mosaic glass sculpture was taken out of the Duck Pond on Mother’s Day weekend and is about to undergo repairs in a studio about a mile away.

Dragon out of water.

The dragon is once again under the care of Gary Gresko who created it in 2004. At Gary’s studio, the sculpture will get a much-needed refit, literally from the top of the dragon’s head to its bottom, under the water. This could take a few months.

Duck Pond dragon with a passenger, in a photo taken in March, several weeks before the dragon’s keel went kaput. In addition to its keel being repaired, the dragon will also get some scales replaced on the ridge of its back. It may have lost them due birds such as this one breaking the scales off. Sculptor Gary Gresko says he’s taking steps to prevent that in future..
Keel Kaput After 8 Years

Keels are not standard equipment on most dragons, but a keel was necessary to keep this one upright in Oriental’s Duck Pond. In 2004, Gary put what he describes as an I-beam under the dragon’s platform. It may not have been sophisticated in terms of naval architecture, but for 8 years, it pretty much worked.

Sure, the dragon would occasionally fall over on its side after high winds and high water — Hurricane Irene provides one example in recent memory. But once storm conditions subsided, it generally wasn’t hard to get the dragon back in to its upright position. One of the dragon’s human minders would paddle out, gently give the dragon a shove with an oar or kayak paddle, and the dragon would pop right back up.

Dragon on its side, Mothers’ Day weekend. Greg Piner tried to right it, but there wasn’t enough keel left to keep the dragon upright. That led to it being taken out of the water.

On Mother’s Day weekend, however, that usual trick didn’t work. Folks who paddled out to right the dragon, couldn’t. No matter what they tried, the dragon wouldn’t stay up. Gary Gresko says the reason soon became obvious. The dragon’s steel keel — a foot-deep when deployed in 2004 — had disintegrated. All that was left was a stub with just a few inches of rust. There was no counterweight.

Disintegrated keel. It’d been in the Duck Pond water for 8 years. Anti-fouling paint was not applied nor was maintenance done. The dragon just floated, until the keel decayed so much that it didn’t provide enough counterbalance to keep the dragon upright.
Rethinking The Keel

Gary Gresko says the steel beam keel “got eaten by the Duck Pond.” The brackish water did its thing, as salt will do to steel, though Gary somewhat darkly suggests the waters there (it was once used as a dump) could be “keel-eating,” if not flesh-eating.)

For the dragon, the bottom line was that it had no bottom.

Gresko will build a new keel in the next month or two. This time he says, “there’s no point messing around” with something that would again provide a home for barnacles or fall victim to electrolysis. No bare steel construction this time.

Gary Gresko, at left, shows how he envisions copper sheathing will cover the side of the dragon’s platform and extend around the keel. .

Gary toyed with the idea of a concrete keel, but now is focusing more on a keel made of a combo of lead and copper – using copper plate and pipe to create a bulb keel and to enclose the lead, and then using copper sheathing around the edge of the dragon’s platform. He’s envisioning a deeper keel, of perhaps 17 inches. (First some reconnaissance of Duck Pond depths in the swinging circle may be in order.)

A Retrofit From Bottom To Top

Not all of Gresko’s efforts will be below the water line. The dragon’s topsides need some attention as well.

For instance, the dragon has some bare spots along the ridge of its back. Eight years of the elements — ice in winter, heat and humidity in summer, and the occasional falling over in to the water may have compromised the glass. In addition, Gary Gresko suggests another culprit at work: wildlife.

Dragon’s broken back.

Back in 2004, Gary has stuck shards of green glass (from Yeungling bottles) sharp side up along that ridge so that it would better resemble scales and catch the glint of light. He thought that would also prevent small animals and birds from perching on the humps of the dragon’s back. It worked for a while.

The glass on the dragon’s sides generally stayed put, but those shards of green glass along the top of the dragon’s back, did not. In the repair sessions, the dragon will get new paint on the cement between the glass pieces.

But Gary may have underestimated the animals’ determination to use the dragon as a couch. Despite — or because of — those sharp pieces of glass, the glass is gone from the dragon’s back. (Those exposed edges could have made them easier to pry off.)

Whether it was animals or the elements, the result is that the humps of the dragon’s back are stripped of Yeungling green and show patches of bare white concrete. “Insult to injury, that just gave the birds a steady perch.

Gary Gresko’s alter ego, Dr. Otto Braunschweiger on a consultation visit to the ailing Duck Pond dragon.

(Ahead, herons and hurricanes harrass the dragon.)

[page]

Hurricanes and Herons Take A Toll

Also needing replacement is the dragon’s horn. When deployed 8 years ago, the horn – made of a real elk horn – had been sticking up from the middle of the dragon’s head. Now it is gone.


The photo on top was taken when the dragon was launched in 2004 and shows a more golden pigment (since bleached by the sun) and a prominent horn. In the photo taken this week in Gary Gresko’s studio, there’s no horn on snout (Gary says a heron took it off) and the dragon has a palid complexion. Both of those vanities will be attended to in the refit.

Gary Gresko lays blame for the damage on a heron. Or maybe multiple herons. The horn was right in the spot on the dragon’s head where a heron perched, and had been photographed often. It was a scene to behold, and passersby would stop to take in the heron-on-the-dragon. The dragon’s sculptor is less admiring of that interplay between art and nature. Bird and animals, Gresko says, “plop around” and break dragon parts.

“There’s all kinds of things to sit on,” he says,as if addressing the avian dragon squatters.“Don’t sit on the dragon!”

A photo from last June, that was On The Cover of TownDock.net, shows a green heron standing where the elk horn once was.
Aim: Outsmarting The Birds

As the birds likely won’t listen to his imploring, Gresko’s working out ways to otherwise persuade the birds from perching on his sculpture. Namely, “more sharp things sticking up” around the base of the dragon and on its head. This time around, Gresko says, the spiky horn sticking out of the dragon’s head will be “deeper, stronger and sharper.” The point, he says, is to “make it uncomfortable” for herons and wildlife.

The dragon’s wings — made of fiberglass — will be reworked and given a new shine. When first deployed in 2004, the wings gleamed in the light. Gresko says he would like to coat them in paper-thin gold leaf to bring that shimmer. Asked if any of those materials would make it prey to thieves, Gresko notes the “flesh-eating bacteria” of the Duck Pond would dissuade them. (See above: keel-eating waters)

Donations of Funds and Materials Welcomed

Gary Gresko initially figured the cost of materials and labor to be about $500, but it may be higher given the price of the copper needed for the keel. If you have materials to donate — thin mirrored glass that is thin or colored mirrored glass pieces (not plate; less than 1/4 inch) could be a help. (Gary says he has enough of the Yeungling green glass beer bottles. ) Also needed are copper sheathing, copper pipe or plate. If you’d like to make a financial donation, send it directly to Gary Gresko at PO Box 284, Oriental, NC 28571.

———————————————————————————————-

Earlier Stories and Photos About The Duck Pond Dragon

For the March 2004 story about the dragon being built, click here.

For the May 2004 story about the dragon’s launch in to the Duck Pond, click here.

For view of a bird on the Duck Pond dragon’s back, click here.

For the On The Cover photo of a green heron on the Duck Pond dragon’s snout, click here.

Duck Pond dragon as seen in a 2009 On The Cover photo.

————————————————————————————————————

Post Script: The Original Duck Pond Dragon

This dragon is not the first to grace the Oriental Duck Pond. Compared to an earlier Duck Pond dragon’s travails, this one is faring pretty well.

Grace Evans says that an earlier dragon was secretly launched on Halloween 1991. It can be told now that it was Grace and Sue Henry who deployed it and that artists Gary Gresko and Pat McAbee were part of its creation. During that dragon’s stay in the Duck Pond, says Grace, “it had several adventures that necessitated it being laid up from time to time.”

It was stolen by teenagers — and recovered by then police chief Jim Bunn. Its anchor at that time, says Grace, “was a cement block and its leash was usually chain link that could rust out or get kinked.

It also broke loose of its mooring in a storm. Grace reports that “it was floating out past the Town Dock in a northeaster and Missy Baskervill ran from her office (now The Bean) and rescued it.”

That dragon also “got beat up in two hurricanes and finally broke up,” Grace Evans says. “It was low tech as you can see from the part I salvaged.” The head of that earlier dragon is at the Oriental History Museum.

The town went a few years without a Duck Pond dragon before the 2004 launching of the dragon that is now being repaired.

Posted Friday May 25, 2012 by Melinda Penkava


Share this page:

back to top