In 1980 gallery owner Paul Waggoner was on his way to a brunch in Beverly when he made a wrong turn and happened upon a yard that looked like it had come from another planet. Brightly painted hand-carved wooden figures lined the fences, climbed the homemade trellises, and stuck out of planters alongside the house. A creature on a post spread its wings above five sticks of wood that stretched upward like fingers waving hello. Waggoner noted the address and drove on.
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The house was on 97th Street and belonged to Derek Webster, who had made the decorative sculptures just so he’d have something to look at while he worked on the yard and waited for the flowers and vegetables to grow. When Waggoner returned to the house two days later, Webster wasn’t particularly surprised at the sight of a strange car at the curb and a stranger ringing the bell. “People would stop by and congratulate me,” he says. “They’d tie up the traffic a little bit.” But none of the gapers had owned a gallery, and no one had suggested that his yard decorations ought to be in one.
Webster has carved and painted a great deal of lumber in his basement workshop over the years, but Waggoner has a special affection for the early work. Webster was a pure original, he says, uninfluenced by other artists’ traditions and fashions. Yet after 1985, Waggoner believes, Webster started playing to the galleries.
