December 2010. Imagine the sound of a light rain. Drops fall from an iris petal, gather in a caladium’s cup, then roll down onto a lily pad and into a pond. And tip toeing through this watery landscape is a heron, whose careful steps contribute to the liquid symphony with a tiny splash.

Now press pause on this scene, dip the whole tableau in copper, and you’re looking at one of Buddy Holmes’s handcrafted water fountains.

“Most people buy [these fountains] for the sound more than anything else,” says Holmes, whose craftsman career started when he built a birdhouse for a friend years ago. The powerful word-of-mouth advertising method allowed Holmes to quit his day job about ten years ago and pursue his craft full-time. He is completely self-taught, having learned how to turn copper into flora and fauna by experimentation.

Three happy dogs, a pair of gloves, and goggles are your friends in Holmes’s large Prairieville studio, which is under the same roof as his living quarters. He has amassed a collection of blacksmithing and other tools that are employed in a process that involves annealing (or softening), hammering, and soldering. It’s a process that allows egrets, orchids, dragonflies, magnolia blossoms, irises, and butterflies to spring forth from a lifeless sheet of copper.

Before being permanently affixed to a fountain scene, a caladium shape cut from copper, for example, is torched to an unimaginable temperature, dunked into or sprayed with cooling water, subjected to a band saw if necessary, and is in for a beating on a sinking stump or a swage block from hammers of every shape and size. When the dust settles and the steam clears, the texturized caladium perkily stands up next to its neighboring fountain fixtures as though none of this has just happened.

Unless a client requests it, Holmes does not sketch out fountains ahead of production. “I can see it. I see in my mind what it will look like... I’m not an artist. I’m not trying to say anything with my work. I just want to make something pretty,” which he does. “I’ll accept ‘artisan’ if you want to push it that far.”  Which we do.

Word-of-mouth still works quite well for Holmes. He recently made a fountain for someone down in Thibodaux. “His sister saw it and ordered one for herself. A little while later, her son called and ordered one.”

To peruse his work and order one of your own, visit www.waterfallforge.com or call (225) 622-2997.

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