[caption id="attachment_67445" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="Joe Hayden pictured last Friday at Comic Con at the Javits Center."]
If you like the idea of personalized, handcrafted garden gnomes, then Joe Hayden is your man. Just get a tomato stake to hold them down and you're in business.
The L.I. graphic artist stumbled upon the idea of making ornaments inspired by comic book styles at a class at Briarcliff College recently. The teacher had introduced the idea of three dimensions using buoyancy billet foam, which comes in 6 feet x 3 feet x 18 inch blocks.
And so for last week's four-day Comic Con at the Javits Center in New York, Hayden changed from his usual role of enthusiastic fan to that of exhibitor.
"It's like I'm at Disney World, but can't go on the rides," said the graphic designer from Floral Park, L.I.
A regular for the past six or seven years at the event, he would normally spend much of his time watching the pros at work in Artist Alley. But he'd been hard at work himself in recent months, as his stand at the Javits Center attested. He spends at least four hours carving each of the "foam creatures." and then paints them with latex house paint. The custom-made end product is weather durable, but some buyers might be as happy to have them on the mantle indoors.
They are generally inspired by existing designs, but Hayden said companies would only clamp down on mass production using molds, and are not worried about labor-intensive first-time experimental efforts.
Hayden reckoned that he was on to something when an employee at Briarcliff College paid him $100 for one of the first ornaments he made. He has since set a price of $45 for most of them.
The mainly young people at Comic Con weren't perhaps the ideal demographic; they aren't the type that would commission once-off pieces. And though the ornaments are very sturdy, they are light. "So some think they must be junk," he said.
"I'm interested in seeing the reaction I get here," added Hayden, a former employee of the Irish Echo.
"They started as much smaller things," he said about the comic-book conventions. "Comic Con was lots of the same type of guy who wanted to pick up the copies they were missing. Now it has grown into this big commercial thing."
He cited the example of the panel on the 2012 movie "The Avengers," which was scheduled to have four of its stars and the director.
Hayden said his Comic Con experience could only serve him well in his role as exhibitor. For one thing, he understood that it pays to be nice when so many people attending such events in whatever capacity aren't. One celebrity, an actress, complimented him earlier in the day on his "good manners."
Joe Hayden can be contacted at foamartform@gmail.com. His work can be viewed at www.joegaranger.deviantart.com.
