How do we define someone as being from Waldoboro? By family? By residence? By childhood? Or, by the people they know and love? Jay Sawyer (aka JBONE) lives in Warren but he grew up in Waldoboro. He went to high school here and made life-long friends here. And he found a mentor here, too, in Jean Lawrence. So, let’s also call him as from Waldoboro, at least for this column. Jay is a sculptor. You may have seen his work in what is essentially an outdoor sculpture park, open Sundays and Mondays through October off Route 90. But he wasn’t always an artist. After graduating from Maine Maritime, he was a merchant marine for five or so years, and then, for some years after, what he calls a ‘welding jobber,’ repairing whatever was needed, from ladders on ships to a broken-down skidder deep in the woods. It was only after three different sculptors, in a span of two years, recognized in the quality of his work that he had what it took to make it as a sculptor. And that’s what he has done since 2008, creating large-scale sculptures out of iron and steel that reference his life and the people, largely from Waldoboro, who have influenced it. His latest piece is destined for Waldoborough Historical Society, and in a month or so there will be a ceremony. It is a memorial to Jean Lawrence.
I moved to Waldoboro from Bath with my parents halfway through second grade and I did Miller School. In fact, Mrs. Butler inspired one of my pieces in a series of work I did. We were learning penmanship and practicing our cursive on yellow, lined paper, copying the letters that were on top of the blackboard. I really thought practicing cursive was a good thing.
But I remember Mrs. Butler telling us that we’d let her down with our assignment because our penmanship was sloppy. She said, “Many, many of you are going to have to do this over.” I was sitting in the front row because I was always getting into shenanigans and thinking, “Jeez, how do you mess this up?” because it seemed easy to me. And all of a sudden, boom! She puts down my paper and it has a bunch of red marks on it, because I had not written the w’s correctly. I’d strayed outside the lines, and I’d made them into a double ‘u’s because that was how it was pronounced. But I had not copied the board which was double ‘v’s, because it seemed kind of funky to be writing out a double ‘v’ and be calling it a double ‘u’. I had to do it all over again.
And that’s why, if you see my piece, the series of letters I call “Sculpture Soup,” you’ll see a double ‘u’ for the ‘w’ and I call it Double U.
I have a lot of memories of Waldoboro, like riding my bike to Bear Hill Market and to Gay’s Country Store to pick up a gallon of milk for my mother. And of being in Doug Parent’s store for candy or a comic book, after my mother finally got the courage to let me go there. I guess she was worried because he was known for dropping the f-bomb. And to me, as a kid, it was amazing to hear him roll right into it, in a long string of words. And it was just the way he talked.
So, Doug Parent is responsible in part for my F-Bomb, another piece in the Sculpture Soup. But it’s more. To me, the f-bomb is a big term. It has all these meanings. And it’s kind of this little enigma of its own, too, a whole arena all by itself. There are so many different ways to use it. Is it acceptable? Or, is it rogue? Or, is it showing that you’re a lowlife? Or that you’re cool?
When Jean Lawrence saw the piece, and it was long after she’d retired, she laughed. When I was her student, though, she was very proper, very consistent, very sophisticated. I always looked up at her as one of the teachers that truly deserved respect. In my mind, she put the students first. Always. She was there to help students be all that they could be. She had a large influence on me in my early years.
It took me a long time to figure those out. Once I was aware that I had gifts, I was able to connect a lot of dots that I didn’t understand, and it goes back to senior year at Medomak Valley High School. I was both President of Student Council and Class Clown.
Senior year, Jean went to bat for me. Everyone in Waldoboro will remember the class of 1979, because we lost two fellow seniors just a few months before graduation and a few weeks apart, both in auto accidents — Laurie Pinkham who was a friend, and Stephen Chew whom I thought was a good person.
Well, the graduation committee realized they needed to have a different speaker, someone to memorialize this loss, and for some reason, someone threw my name in the ring. But a lot of people shook their heads and said that I wouldn’t take it serious, and Jean put her hand up and said, “Jay can do this. I will help Jay do this. We will do this. You put his name right down there, and we’ll move on to the next topic.”
I think Jean saw what people were capable of. And she wanted them to pursue that and strive to do that. That was what she saw in me, that side of potential which I didn’t always take serious. I didn’t look at it as a gift because I thought anybody could do that.
And I thought the same way about my welding, that anybody could do it. So when those sculptors thought I could do sculpture, too, I went to Rockland and looked at galleries. And I realized, “I want this. I can do this.”
Those were the toughest years of my life. I was welding jobs, and I was making art, and those two don’t go good up here in my brain. Plus, pulling away and having the time and money to support it – it was very hard. It was at least five years before I could say no to all those welding jobs. That’s when my shop became my studio.
Well, Jean saw some of this work and said, “When you get ready with all your letters, I would love to have you come and do a talk.” So, I gave a talk to the Historical Society, and then, because Jean was also on the Friends of the Waldoboro Library, I gave another one at the Waldoboro Library.
And in the middle of that presentation, I said, “We’ve got this opportunity, and if I might be so bold as to put Jean Lawerence on the spot, I would like to document and catch this on film: I want Jean to come up and hold the F-Bomb,” and I held up a small version of the sculpture.
Well, Jean jumped right out there and held it, and I got underneath it with my open hands and went, “One…two…three..” and Jean dropped the F-Bomb with that great Jean smile.
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