After long hiatus, artist returns to his passion, hometown

CARTHAGE, Mo. -- After a seven-year hiatus, artist Lowell Davis is painting once again.

He's also dotting the Southwest Missouri area near Carthage with signs that carry his trademark flair. They hawk everything from restaurants to dentists' offices, but to call them signs hardly does them justice.

They are bits of sculpted metal that bring Davis' characters to life in the service of hometown commerce.

It is a quiet victory for a man who says life has dealt him cycles of wealth and fame, poverty and crippling depression.

Davis' figurines are avidly sought by collectors, and he's been featured in magazines as prestigious as The Smithsonian. But, he has trouble making small talk, and just a trip to the grocery store can provoke an attack of anxiety.

In the living room of his rustic home on a cold winter's day, basking in the warmth of a well-tended fire, Davis puffs on his corncob pipe and ponders whether he really has anything new to say.

He doesn't, he claims. Then: "I think an artist should taste the good and the bad, the laughter and the crying," Davis said. "I want to put all of my mediums together, all the pain and the happiness of my life, into my art. I want to make a statement."

Set his studio on fire

Davis, 65, is at home again at Red Oak II, his whimsical community three miles northeast of Carthage in which he has re-created his rural Missouri boyhood. It is named for his hometown of Red Oak in Lawrence County, 23 miles to the east, off old Route 66.

Davis spent most of last year on the river near Noel, nursing his wounds from what he calls a financially devastating divorce and the pressure of having to produce work on demand.

The stress was so bad, Davis said, that seven years ago he burned down his own studio at Red Oak II and never expected to paint again. It took him until last year, he says, to put his life back together.

Now, having sworn off marriage and free of the burden of feeding the insatiable appetite of a commercial art machine, Davis claims he is happier than ever.

Davis spent the 1990s raising up Red Oak II from what was once a cornfield. He had returned to Carthage from Dallas, and he soon busied himself saving many of the buildings that were important to him in childhood: his grandfather's general store, a blacksmith shop and assorted cabins that date to before the Civil War.

The town that Davis built hasn't been open to the public for a couple of years. It's just too much of a burden to keep the place in shape for visitors, Davis says, and the $4,000 annual tax burden is too much to bear.

Davis began making signs a couple of years ago as a way of easing himself back into art.

His first creation is still his favorite. Called the "Crap Duster," it's an airplane made from a manure spreader that is in continuous flight over the Flying W Conoco on Highway 96 just east of Carthage.

"I don't like to call them signs," Davis says. "I prefer to call them life-size sculptures."