One of Marshall Fredericks’ great whimsical works the Friendly Dragon will soon be completed for all to view at the Museum. The sculpture was first created in 1979 and enlarged to a 12 foot bronze for Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Be sure to stop by and see the first new sculpture to be added to the Main Exhibition Gallery in over 22 years.
From the 1981 Joy Colby interview about the creation and meaning of the Friendly Dragon:
MF (Marshall Fredericks)
It’s sort o a great big smooth frog and it has great big round polished gold eyes that are half a sphere and they’re just like mirrors so when you look in them you can see yourself all distorted like you do in a circus. So every time you go there you see all this. It worked out fine. So I did three, that’s all. I did another one but it was of a dragon, I called it The Friendly Dragon. The architect said he didn’t think he would use it because he said the children would be frightened of a dragon. But children love dragons and it’s not an ugly dragon, it’s a friendly dragon with a big smile and it’s cozy and you can sit on its back on those humps on its back. It’s just that he never was a child, I guess, so he doesn’t know. So they put up a thing, a structural beam thing. I’ve never seen a child near it so maybe they didn’t get the audience that they wanted really. I think maybe I’ll do that Dragon. I like dragons anyway, they’re special.
JC (Joy Colby)
Why are dragons special to you?
MF
Well, Rozzie- one time I guess it was when I was sixty, Rozzie and the children got Earl Krentzin to make a walking stick for me with a dragon on top, which I love. And because she said that all these things, like all these big commissions which, you know, could kill you almost believe me the problems, Joy, are so manifold you can’t believe in a thing like that Cleveland fountain… And to do it all alone, I mean without a big staff or anything, or if I were some company that does it for you like they do today, you know, their sculpture things are manufactured things, the things I do are sculpture things. And she said that all these things have been dragons that I’ve fought against, you know. And in a way that’s really true, they been sort of dragons that you have to conquer and slay one way or another.
