The rusted prow of the Chebeague stone sloop Alletta L. Hamilton has sailed straight out of the history books and onto the clapboards of the Chebeague Island Historical Society this spring. The sloop cuts through the shimmering waves, burnished reds and blues gleaming from the depths of the stainless steel and has stayed it course through the rain and fog of this damp summer-a testament to its rugged materials and workmanship.
The sculpture is a recent creation of Cumberland native Clint Jones, a skilled boat and car mechanic by trade and a metal sculptor, fisherman, and boating enthusiast on the side.
Viewing his numerous creations displayed up and down the Maine coast, it is evident that work and hobby have become intertwined: a graceful lobster boat races out of a giant metal saw blade, a glimmering stainless steel fish cuts through brass weeds, an accurately detailed motorcycle seems to race at the viewer, a perfectly balanced heron perches on spindly rebar legs. Although many of his sculptures find a home on Chebeague Island in Casco Bay, they are crafted in a workshop housed in a former dairy barn in Cumberland.
The sparks shower the morning air with blinding white light as Jones takes a plasma torch to a scrap of steel inside his workshop overlooking the countryside where he grew up. Torches, gas canisters, sheaves of paper, sheets and scraps of metal fill the damp room.
As the white-hot tip of the torch grazes the metal guided by an expert hand, he explains in scientific terms how the plasma cutter he bought less than 10 years ago differs from the old WW II oxyacetylene torch a family friend gave him when he was about 13 years old.
A few seconds later a heart-shaped piece falls to the ground with a distinctive clank and he pulls off the eye shield, pushes a button behind him and the ventilation system whirrs to life. He’s been in workshops like this for decades of his 45 years and his movements around machinery and metal are second nature.
Aided by his “oxy” torch, Jones’ childhood interest in welding and mechanics grew as he aged. “I couldn’t stop turning wrenches,” he says, recounting his teenage years of blue-ribboned, mechanically intricate science fair projects and an obsession with motorcycles. After high school, Jones headed off to Eastport to put his talent for tinkering to use in a marine mechanics certification. While welding boats and building Travelifts with his classmates, he found that his hobby of cutting scraps of metal into names and shapes and sending the creations home got great response.
After school he returned to the Portland area and at the age of 22 made his first sale: a sculpture of Blackbeard the pirate for a now defunct South Portland restaurant. As car mechanics became his main source of income, he continued creating and selling sculptures mostly on speculation with commissioned works here and there, but always as a hobby-not a profession-a distinction he adamantly makes.
Jones’ art isn’t just about torching shapes out of metal. As he flips through a stack of papers, some of them car-repair receipt forms, the sculptures hanging around the periphery of the workshop return to their two-dimensional form on the page. “Any idiot can cut metal,” says Jones. “That’s not what its all about for me. It’s just one part of the process. It’s the thought, the piece of paper, drawing those patterns.”
In his earlier days he cut his sculptures freestyle but soon realized that creating paper patterns from his drawings and tracing his designs on the metal would allow him to replicate favorite designs and then tweak the direction or change subtle details to make each piece unique. “I can keep them alive as long as I want,” he says.
Jones’ passion for drawing started when he was a child. “I learned to draw from my father. He learned from his father. I wouldn’t go to bed until he would draw a picture with me.”
The interest in drawing wasn’t the only thing he had in common with his father-both men share a connection to Chebeague and surrounding Casco Bay that runs deep. His father, Joe Jones Jr., and uncles were lobstermen and fished out of Falmouth Town Landing. Jones spent much of his youth on the stern on his father’s boat or getting into mischief at the water’s edge.
Not surprisingly, Jones generates many of his ideas for sculptures while fishing out on his 21-foot Bayliner Trophy. Plying the waters of Casco Bay and beyond, fishing reel or pen and paper in hand, he inevitably comes back with well-doodled sheaves alive with seagulls, sharks, fish, and boats. Jones then makes a pattern that can be cut out of metal while retaining the details of the drawing- not an easy task. Like an infinite loop, the flat image must be one single piece of metal, whether cut from one sheet or welded together, and must be able to structurally support itself. Then provisions must be made for the display: hooks for hanging or custom made stands that allow the sculpture to turn or pivot.
A stainless-steel lobster boat destined to become a wind vane sits on Jones’ workshop floor, metal waves and a cantilevering lobster trap nearby. Trial and error will prevail until Jones gets the perfect balance of boat, waves, and trap so eventually the boat will bob in the waves as the trap bounces under the surface, all the while freely turning in the wind. It is clear while listening to Jones talk excitedly about the sculpture that the physics puzzle before him is part of the passion and fits in perfectly with his mechanical problem solving skills.
It’s those mechanical skills that have kept him busy on Chebeague. When he’s not in his workshop in Cumberland, or at his and his partner Melissa Doughty’s home in Casco, or out fishing, he is usually racing around Chebeague fixing the island cars. He and Doughty stay on her parents’ property on the island’s West End, giving Jones a home base as well as a deeper personal connection with the island.
As they drive around Chebeague they cannot get too far without seeing some of his creations: an eagle with talons bared on the South Road, a gleaming heron bobbing on a front lawn on the North Road, a running deer on the path to Deer Point. In recent years the number of pieces commissioned by Chebeaguers has increased as the visibility of his work has grown. Jones always has a sculpture or two in the backseat to show off to those with interest. “People are starting to notice the lasting quality of the sculptures,” he says.
In recent years the number of pieces commissioned by Chebeaguers has increased as the visibility of his work has grown. Jones always has a sculpture or two in the backseat to show off to those with interest. “People are starting to notice the lasting quality of the sculptures,” he says.
Longevity is one of Jones’ primary reasons for working with the medium. “The object will take a beating outside and you can’t say that about too many objects. Paintings get yellow, they don’t get attended to, they get wet; they’re so fragile. I like the strength of metal.” Combining his love for drawing with the durability of metal, he sees each sculpture as a time capsule that will last for hundreds of years and will be able to tell historians a story about our era. “The storytelling art, like of Sanford [Doughty] rowing to Portland, it means a lot to me,” Jones says, referencing his sculpture of an island fisherman pulling oars in his dory. “The lobster boats and [this way of life]-this stuff is going to pass. But some of these [metal sculptures] are going to exist. If someone pulls this out of the dust after a nuclear blast or something, they’ll say this is what life was like back then in this world.”
The Chebeague Historical Society is still seeking donations to help pay for Jones’ sculpture.