Loose Leaf Notes

~ The following was published in The Floyd Press newspaper on April 30, 2009.
“But how will my friends know it is me, Barnaby, the old barn?” “Simple,” said the toymaker. “Your boiler and cab are made from the logs that you had when you were a barn, and the roof of your cab is red like the red roof you had as a barn.” ~ From Barnaby: The Barn Who Dared to Dream by Ron Campbell
When Ron Campbell was a young boy he played with a wooden paddleboat, handmade by his grandfather. Campbell doesn’t know what happened to that heirloom toy, but he has never forgotten it. “I want to continue the cycle of passing things along,” he said about the steam locomotive he built for his grandson from the wood of an old chestnut barn.
Campbell’s locomotive, which is also a kaleidoscope and a nightlight, is part of his three piece exhibit, currently on display at the Jacksonville Center’s “The Earth is Our Home” Hayloft Gallery show. Other works in Campbell’s exhibit are his pen, ink, and watercolor drawing of a red roofed log barn, and a framed signed first copy of a children’s book about a barn named Barnaby that dreamed of being a locomotive.
Both the drawing and the children’s book, written and illustrated by the artist, are framed with salvaged wood from the same old log barn that the locomotive was made from. The barn sat for more than 100 years on Conner Road before it was dismantled by Campbell and his neighbor. ‘Take the whole thing. I want it out of my view,’ said the woman who answered Campbell’s ad for “barn wood.”
Born in Cullen and raised in Williamsburg, Virginia, Campbell had been working a high stress job in Atlanta before coming to Floyd. “I came out of corporate America saying, ‘I’ve had enough of this. There’s something better,'” he said. After retiring from his job and then purchasing land in 2001, he and his wife Lenny moved to the county in 2003. He had an art business in mind. “I’ve been drawing since I was a kid,” he said.
For years Campbell worked as a computer technician. His background in electronics came in handy when he added sound effects – a bell, a whistle, and choo choo – to his heirloom locomotive. His experience as a woodworker, which Campbell says he “learned along the way,” helped him to recognize the value and rarity of the old Connor barn, built with American chestnut, an important part of Floyd culture before the chestnut blight of the early 1900’s.
Pointing out the wooden pegs incorporated in one of his picture frames, Campbell explained how they were commonly used to put buildings together before store bought nails were available. “There were some handmade square nails in the barn. We saved as many as we could,” he said.
After building his own log home with a wrap-around porch, Campbell set about to make eight wooden swings, two for each side of the house. He completed two and sold a third, then a fourth. Soon he was filling orders. A bench with a wood burned banjo design in it was purchased by Woody Crenshaw for The Floyd Country Store. Another two benches and a swing can be found at Sweet Providence Farm Store.
Potter Jayn Avery, a Jacksonville Center board member and co-chair of the exhibit committee, remembers Campbell’s hesitance when he first entered a piece for exhibit. “When he put his first bench in a show he wasn’t sure it was okay,” she said. Referring to his current multi-medium display, she said, “He’s a wonderful carpenter who has joined all his different skills, his eye for carpentry and wood, sketching, and, as it turns out, even writing.”
Another artist active at the Jacksonville Center, Marie Daniel, was instrumental in Campbell’s involvement with the Center. She encouraged Campbell to show his pen and ink drawn barns after seeing them on his website and being impressed. When Campbell first came to Floyd he took classes at the Jacksonville Center, now he is teaching them. “I just finished a third class of about eight students,” he noted.
Avery says that it’s been fun to watch Campbell’s art grow over the past few years. She thinks his story is a good example of how a person’s creativity can be nurtured by a healthy arts presence in the community. “One of the Jacksonville Center’s missions is to keep arts in the hands of everyday people and not have it be something out of reach,” she explained, adding, “And we want people to recognize that everyone has inside them a creative aspect and that it takes many forms.”
Campbell says he plans to make four more limited edition heirloom locomotives to be sold at the Country Store. The accompanying book about Barnaby the barn can be custom made to include the name of any child, just as Campbell’s grandson Mason is a character in the first printing.
Although it took 2 – 3 months to hand build the first locomotive, Campbell says, “I’ve got a pattern of every piece now, so the next four won’t be so hard or expensive.” His hope is that the old Connor barn will live on through the passing down of the heirloom toys, just like the one in his story. “It was there for well over 100 years,” he said about the barn. “Maybe the locomotives will be here for another 100 years. Maybe more.” ~ Colleen Redman