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AssetID: 37193425

Headline: Artist Creates Amazing Halloween Sculptures From Hay Bales

Caption: PICTURE SHOWS: Jean Marie Smith says: " This is me as "The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe". Our Halloween event at Creasey Mahan Nature Preserve includes a Fairy Tale Trail with painted sets and characters where kids can trick or treat with their parents. After I get the hay bales and the haunted house completed, I put on my old woman costume and pass out "porridge" with a spoon for four hours. By the time Halloween actually gets here, I'm exhausted!!" ... STORY COPY: These amazing Halloween sculptures have been fashioned from hay bales. Artist Jean Marie Smith creates the work for a Halloween event at Creasey Mahan Nature Preserve in Goshen, Kentucky. New sculptures for 2019 include Bart Simpson, Iron Man, R2D2, and characters from Where the Wild Things Are. Jean explains: “My hay bale art has been an evolutionary process. I began stencilling the ends of hay bales 10 years ago for a local Halloween event after seeing similar bales with Jack O’Lantern faces painted on them at an event in a neighbouring state. Not wanting to copy their idea altogether, I decided to change it up by making black silhouettes of bats, witches, cats with a yellow background of a moon. Five years ago, it occurred to me that we could stand a bale on end and make a giant Jack O’Lantern. The next year I got adventurous and tried sculpting a Frankenstein. It was the most fun I’ve ever had creating art and from then on I was hooked on hay bale sculpting. The following year brought a minion, the Cat in the Hat, and Lego Batman. The next year Harry Potter and Hedwig were the stars of the show. “Our Haunted Hike event for 2019 was this past weekend with a record crowd in attendance. They posed for photos with hay bale sculptures of Bart Simpson, Ironman, R2D2 and many others. It took me a solid week to sculpt all of them during a heat wave that saw temperatures in the high 90’s. I hydrated frequently and carried on until the last bale was completed. “It was very gratifying to sit back and look at all of my newly created, but temporary “babies”. As I worked, parents with their children would stop by and ask me questions and pose with the completed hay bales. That’s what it’s all about for me, creating special moments for families and putting smiles on their faces.” “Our Halloween event at Creasey Mahan Nature Preserve includes a Fairy Tale Trail with painted sets and characters where kids can trick or treat with their parents. After I get the hay bales and the haunted house completed, I put on my "The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe" costume and pass out "porridge" with a spoon for four hours. By the time Halloween actually gets here, I'm exhausted. “I've been a full time artist for 35 years, but I also have four adult children. I started out as a portrait artist so I could work from home and be with my children when they were small. Needless to say, my artwork also includes many school play set designs. I'm currently working on a children's book of poetry. I taught art for five years at Louisville Visual Art, but recently retired from that to do the Artist-in-Residence at Creasey Mahan Nature Preserve where I also am a resource teacher for school field trips.”

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