Bob Garrett

By Barry Tourigny

I was greeted at the front gate by a hand painted Frosty the Snowman attached to his front gate. Robert and his friend Brenda told me he had made about fifty of them over the years for friends. It would prove to be a peak into Robert’s world.
As I entered the backyard it was quickly apparent this man had some serious woodworking skills. He and Brenda shared storied of various projects he had created over the years, there were a lot of projects! You couldn’t help but hear how proud Brenda was of Robert’s accomplishments.

Down a set of stairs and we entered his wood shop…a man’s man cave, his domain. His partially completed engine sat front and center of the shop floor. Robert’s career and hobbies lined the walls of the structure. On a second floor loft floor were a number of barrels with names like Honey Nut and White House ale, home brew craft beer in various stages of the fermentation process. He would promise me a taste later, but I digress.

What caught my eye was hand painted ad signs in miniature size something that you would take to sell the project to a perspective client, they were everywhere. Much of his career has been spent hand painting signs for the advertising industry, billboards that seemed to defy the elements and remained in place for years. You could see the skill set applied to the half-done entry in the Express.
Robert began sharing with me how he had to remove the door and frame to even get the pedestal into the man cave. Since then his entry has been highly modified including a custom cow catcher he has hand crafted and bolted to the front, this would now mean he would have to remove part of the wall the door is housed in to get out.

He had also customized the pedestal the train engine rests on including a set of steel like rails the train seemingly glides along as it crosses over a wooden railroad trestle. The miniature railroad ties had come from a camping trip where they were being burned as firewood. Robert said “Whoa, way to nice for that” and scooped them up. Robert’s sense of humor shows through his design, I could see the beginnings of an outline he would tell me he had planned a free hand painted Bigfoot peeking out og the wooden trestle structure. The engine was further customized to include sound and lights, an engineering challenge since there would be no power available to the artists at their locations downtown.
Like other artists Robert read about the Artisan’s Express in the Herald Dispatch Sunday paper and was immediately interested in the project. His boyhood love of trains, woodworking skills and free hand painting skills would all come into play with this sure to be crowd pleasing entry.