Good grief! Duluth scarecrow maker sets sights on State Fair win

Jun 03, 2023

DULUTH — Mike Olson lifted a welder's mask off his head and regarded the rusted propane tank sitting in front of him. Smoke trailed from holes on opposite sides of the squat cylindrical tank, which was freshly affixed to a pair of equally aged metal stumps in the shape of inverted, elongated funnels.

"Well," said Olson, "I'm going to call those legs."

By the time Olson was finished, he reckoned, the sculpture would be instantly recognizable as one of the most iconic characters in the history of comic strips.

"We've got the Minnesota connection with Charlie Brown," said Olson. (The character's creator, "Peanuts" cartoonist Charles M. Schulz, grew up in St. Paul.) "A scarecrow doesn't have to elicit the response of, 'Oh, I recognize this,' but I think it adds a layer when it does."

Olson was standing in the metal shop of Duluth MakerSpace in the Lincoln Park neighborhood. The retired Duluth police officer is director of the nonprofit craft facility, which he first became involved with through a welding class in 2017.

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"I dismissed it, didn't really want to go back to work," said Olson about being approached for the directorship. "I went home, talked to my wife. She said, 'You should do it! You're there all the time, you might as well get paid for being there.'"

Olson, who was formerly a board member, said he hopes the organization will eventually be able to make the position a full-time role with higher wages, at which point he'll pass the torch (and the kiln, and the sewing machines, and the lasers).

"Sometimes the universe, or in your own mind you make it the universe, is telling you to step up," said Olson, wearing a well-worn Duluth Trading Co. apron. "You've complained about things; see if you can do any better."

If Olson's second career was something of a surprise, his entry into competitive scarecrow making was even more so. He initially aimed for the Minnesota State Fair's Fine Arts exhibition, in 2019, but his bowling-pin moose didn't make the cut.

"I looked," he recounted, to see "what else can I do? The scarecrow? Well, what are the deadlines? I had to fill out a form. By the time I hit the next page, it said I was registered." The fair was less than a month away.

Olson ended up improvising a tin-man homage to cartoonist R. Crumb's familiar "Keep On Truckin'" character. Somewhere between Duluth and Falcon Heights the scarecrow lost an arm, but Olson convinced a Twin Cities muffler shop to help him make a quick repair and the tin man made it to the fair in the nick of time.

That scarecrow won first place in the adult category. By 2021 (after 2020's pandemic-canceled fair), Olson had graduated into the senior category and took second place with a vaccine-skeptic "COV-idiot" scarecrow.

He continued the topical theme with last year's submission, a mannequin portraying Cassidy Hutchinson testifying before the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack. Donald Trump and Mark Meadows appeared as angry crows, pestering Hutchinson.

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That one might have been a little obscure, Olson mused in retrospect. "A lot of people didn't pay any attention to those hearings," he said. "They didn't know who she was."

Thus, Charlie Brown. A second propane tank has been abbreviated to form the character's head, and a disc harrow blade will serve as the hapless athlete's pitching mound. He'll have a throwing arm, a glove arm and clothing.

"At estate sales, some old guy that was into cars made his own jack stands," said Olson. "I picked them up because they make great legs."

One of Olson's early metal sculptures was a larger-than-life model of his wife, Kathy Levine. You'd have to squint pretty hard to confuse the sculpture with the woman, but Olson admitted to being pleased when a distracted UPS driver started to greet the sculpture as "Kathy" before realizing the truth.

"She's actually startled me a couple times," said the real Kathy, who refers to her doppelganger as "Kathy 2."

More commonly, Olson makes bowling pin sculptures under the brand Flock Duluth. His website features creations including a seagull ($50), a loon ($60) and the prize-winning "Keep On Fishin'" scarecrow.

The fact that the latter hasn't yet been purchased ($600) is fine with Olson and his wife, who "likes crazy yard art," he explained. The tin man remains on display at the couple's Duluth home.

"I've always liked yard art," said Levine, "but I don't like the typical yard art that people have, like butterflies on a stick or that lady bending over in her garden. I like things that are unusual." Levine gave her husband a gift certificate for the MakerSpace welding class in hopes that he would replicate a metal rooster that had been stolen from the couple. (He did.)

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For those interested in creating their own scarecrows or other craft items, Olson enthusiastically recommended membership in the MakerSpace, a sprawling series of well-equipped rooms where "we could triple or quadruple our membership and (still) not have (anyone) wait to use a tool."

Whether or not Olson wins a ribbon when the State Fair opens Thursday, he's pleased to be in the Agriculture Horticulture Building mix alongside giant pumpkins and the perennially popular crop art: "a microscope into how long and cold our winters are," said Olson.

"It's fun watching people walk by all the scarecrows, because everybody smiles," said Levine. "It's such a joyful thing, and it's such a quirky thing."

Do all those artistic scarecrows actually work for their ostensible purpose? "Well," said Olson, "I don't have any crows in my yard!"

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