When D Bill, a retired toolmaker for Caterpillar Tractor, began carving utility poles, it must have seemed natural to him to create detailed engineering drawings for each design. The carvings are whimsical and imaginative, the drawings, technical, detailed and to scale.
D Bill, who preferred an initial to his full name Darwin, mostly sold his work at the annual Sugar Creek Arts Festival in the nicely named Normal, Illinois. But he also used it to decorate his spread in Danvers, a few miles west. The poles were scattered around his house and workshop and lined the long driveway up to his rural property. Some were tipped with animals, some human faces, some prosaic objects like a key or a telephone.
In person D Bill was as whimsical as his art, and welcoming. According to a Chicago Tribune article from 1993, he gave away many of his carvings to friends and neighbors.
D Bill died in 2012 at 89. These photos are from a 2011 visit.
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