The aged camphor tree in front of Elizabeth Wilson’s Galveston home soaked up too much salt-laden storm water from Hurricane Ike. The tree, its immense branches arcing over the street and providing a gym for her five children, died and lost its leaves. Her heart sank when she came home on the birthday of her husband, Frank, who died after the storm of Sept. 13, 2008, to find an orange circle spray painted on the old tree marking it to be cut down.
Her mood changed a week later when a private donor offered to have Galveston artist Earl Jones use a chain saw to transform the stump into a sculpture. As Jones worked, four dolphins and a mermaid blowing a conch shell horn emerged from the wood.
Similar sculptures are proliferating and have become the island’s newest tourist attraction. At least 20 sculptures — from angels holding bunnies to the tin man from The Wizard of Oz — are scattered throughout the storm-ravaged city’s east end. One sculptor says he has commissions for 10 more.
They found sculptor Dayle Lewis of Richmond, Ind., on the Web. Then they began an often frustrating effort to get permission from the city because the sycamore stood in the city right-of-way between the sidewalk and the street. “The city really didn’t want to do this,” Sarah Gandy said. “The city manager at first said no. Flat no.”
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