Stainless ~ Aluminum ~ Copper ~ Brass ~ Bronze
Wrought Iron ~ Cold & Hot Mild Steel

 
About the Artist

I spent the first part of my childhood growing up in a small town called Gold Hill in Southern Oregon. My Great Grandfather from my fathers side moved his family here from California in the late 1800’s in search for gold. My Grandpa and his family from my mother’s side came from Kansas to stay a short while in California to end up here to sell his trade as a carpenter.

I remember walking every day to school with my older brother on the railroad tracks, thinking of grandma’s famous chocolate chip cookies and her homemade root beer I’d be getting into as soon as the last bell rang from school. A lot of my time was spent at my Great Grandparent’s house. I spent many hours playing crazy 8’s, Fish, & War with gram. When I wasn’t playing cards, I was doing the many things a small town provides for a kid to get himself into trouble with. Sometimes I was down at the river looking for crawdads, or maybe digging in the dirt finding old bottles where a century old dump used to be. We had a tree fort where we stashed our Beechnut chewing tobacco, made our own bows and arrows out of limbs from trees, and had bamboo fights with neighbor kids- using trashcan lids for shields, and caught quail using a laundry basket, stick and string with a little bit of birdseed. (We heard there was a bounty for their top notches).

RC cola was the thing of that day, with look under the bottle cap to see if you won 10 cents or “keep looking”. Girls were gross, and you hated to take a bath. Movie theater day on Sunday at school in the summer to watch Godzilla, and it was huge to go to the roller skating rink a few times a year. It was often our family would go to the beach on the river and watch my dad and other grown men dive off the train trestle into the water, and it was a competition to see who counted the most dead salmon floating by in one afternoon. Those were the days! People used to call the folk from Gold Hill “River Rats”. These are my young childhood roots, I guess in some ways I still feel partially attached.

On my seventh birthday, I got my first bike. It was a chrome “Team Murray“, with whitewall tires. Not long after, we moved to a small Quarter horse ranch on the outskirts of Medford, near the small town of Ruch. It was here that learned the ways of animals. We had almost every type of animal at one time or another. Horses, ponies, goats, sheep, dogs, (one that was half-wolf) cats, chickens, peacocks, ferrets, mice, rats, (some great big ones that were not pets), ducks, geese, parrots, cockatiels, parakeets, raised and sold finches at one time, a couple pet coons, some wild ones that ate with the cats, a skunk named “Fat Boy”, A baby deer that we put Pampers on and slit a hole in the diaper for her tail to come out of, so she could live in the house with us until she got old enough. Hence we named her “Pampers”.

My mother was the type of woman that took in every stray or wounded animal. She and my grandmother nursed a marsh hawk with a broken wing back to health and let it free, along with a Mallard drake with the same diagnosis. We hand fed our parrots and cockatiels, and occasionally some wild bird would lose its young to a fall and we would take up the parenting until they were old enough to be set free. We healed a Red-Tailed Hawk with a broken leg, along with a Pygmy Owl that ran into a tree and knocked itself silly. I will never forget the time my brother accidentally shot and killed mom’s favorite male peacock “Sampson”. He put it on the main road and ran it over a few times making it look like a legitimate road kill. There was no fixing that one. She fell for it hook, line, and sinker. Until a couple years ago when I spilled the worms, she knew no different.

I woke up most mornings being drug out of bed by my ankle, mostly because I love to sleep, but mainly because the animals tended to get grumpy if they did not get fed on time before the sun rose. I loathed the chores before and after school. I remember a few summers that truly sucked with work. In hindsight, I really didn’t have it that bad. In the summer months when there was no school and our parents were at work, my brother and I would invite friends over with the intent of putting a dent in our father’s keg of beer, and tapping into his whiskey. We would then see who could make the biggest cannonball by jumping off our roof into the pool. And when that got boring, we would walk around in the woods with our bow and arrows, pretending to be like an Indian, stalking and shooting from different distances at mostly tree stumps, leafs, pinecones, and sometimes mistaking a rock for something our arrows would penetrate. My first motorcycle was a Honda trail 90, the best thing for a young one to learn from. When things got real dull, I would hop on it and tear up the pasture, or ride across the street and do some exploring, making trails and a racetrack with jumps. My trail bike and I were very good buddies.

Our house was on a mountain, surrounded by woods. There were a few ponds to fish in nearby. One, with gigantic bullfrogs. I got pretty good with my bow an arrow on these tasty guys. I was taught by my brother and father the ways of wisdom of hunting and fishing at a young age. We had many deer in our backyard along with a few bears. Our nearest neighbor would have a hard time hearing us if you screamed at the top of your lungs. I spent a lot of time exploring, or making my own personal adventures. Sometimes I would dress up in my fathers Marine uniform with all his shiny metals, bayonet, and camouflage my face. My wars were fierce, with many a dead soldier to be taken by my mud ball grenades thrown from the tree fort. We used to have real fire pinecone wars in the winter months, while we were burning the slash piles. A few neighbor kids, my brother, and I would each have a coffee cup full of gasoline that we would dip our pinecones in, ignite them with a match and toss them at each other. It’s the neatest sound it makes when you hear a flaming pinecone whizzing past your head. I had a friend named Daryl, who was a red head with a great big curly Afro for hair. I remember hucking a flamer at him, just missing his head about ear level that burnt a perfect round swath out of his hair. To this day I would have to say it’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever witnessed. It only lasted about two winters, as someone cheated and drilled me with a dirt clod that had a rock inside of it, giving me a pretty good bloody nose. My mother was ticked off and put an end to it. As you can tell, my parents didn’t really know a lot of what we were doing at times, as we ran mostly free.

I was put into a private Catholic school in the seventh grade, due to the fact that I could not focus and usually missed the days in public school. I played football, baseball, track, and continued to hunt and fish throughout my schooling career. I expanded my mental realm with a game known as Dungeons & Dragons. It is a role-playing game that consists of a time in the Dark Age or Mid-Evil era. Mostly what it was about was using your imagination to the fullest extent possible. It was during this time I believe, that had an influence on my abilities as an artist later in life. I met my girl of future marriage in my junior year, and graduated from St. Mary’s High school. I did not go to college, as school was not my thing. My future wife and I moved in together straight out of graduation, and I got a job as a trailer fabricator for a local boat company. During the following sixteen years, I have worked for many different things. I have tried my hands at carpentry, torn off and replaced many roofs, built aluminum drift and power boats, worked at a charcoal plant for four years, my brother and I owned and operated a hunting guide service, worked for a company that built & supplied the aluminum ramps you walk up to get onto airplanes, been a pipe fitter for the general area mills, built and repaired machinery for a rock crushing business, got to be a part of safely removing the top portion of Ross Raglan theatre in Klamath Falls (a two hundred foot structure), fabricated many different things. I even had the privilege of working at Wildlife Images for a time (a place that heals, cares for, and releases sick and injured wild animals).

Today, I live happily in Southern Oregon with wife and a daughter & young son, two labs, two cats, hamster and a rat. I discovered what I finally wanted to do when I grew up quite by accident. I started making cutouts and silhouettes out of metal, as presents for family members about seven years ago. I love these things. I lose myself as my heart and soul pours into each piece. Nowadays this is my way of living and supporting my family. I love the challenge of teaching my children to hike, hunt, & fish in the most ethical, conservative, environmental, & respectful way. I want to show them how to live, and enjoy every part of life that has so much influenced me in my upbringing. In short, I could have told you this story much faster than I can at typing it, as typing is not my skill, and yes, I’m a very happy man.


Tony Clement

 

Contact: Tony Clement
541-245-0445
Email: tony@clearwatersart.com