CRAIG LENDSKIP
What drives an artist to create is a question that is invariably answered the same way: because they must.
Craig Lendskip could remember the day his life’s inspiration began, even though he was only seven. His father was a corn and soybean farmer. The Lendskips lived in the small town of Darwin, Minnesota, population 200, not the kind of place one would expect to spawn an exceptional artist. Darwin had one unique individual who inspired young Lendskip: Francis A. Johnson.
In March of 1950, Mr. Johnson started to roll a ball of twine in his garage. He was driven to create something that was bigger than his own life: the largest ball of twine. Johnson worked steadily on the ball for 39 years straight, four hours each day, until his death in 1989. This became the largest ball of twine made by a single individual and for Lendskip it laid out his own path in life.
Craig’s father’s farm was next to Johnson’s, and at the age of seven young Craig was brought to visit Johnson, who was working on his ever-expanding ball. Craig’s father liked Johnson as an individual. His farming skills were above average and he was a neighbor on whom you could count. But he was also strange, not unlike his own son. Craig had started incessantly playing with Play-Doh by age three. He was always molding little objects from whatever was at hand. A typical dinner for Craig involved sculpting the mashed potatoes on his plate, adding peas and carrots as decoration, and then spending the meal changing the composition as it slowly was eaten. After dinner it was back to the Play-Doh for a couple more hours of sculpting before bedtime. The elder Lendskip wondered if his son might have some kind of mild retardation that required building things with his hands. But with the exception of his constant sculpting, he was a perfectly normal child. Craig socialized with other kids well and his vocabulary was exceptional. Plus he was a loving child. The only thing abnormal was his constant need to manipulate objects into three-dimensional configurations. Round structures were his favorite form.
Finally, in a desperate move, Mr. Lendskip decided to take his compulsive young son over to Francis Johnson to see what might come of it. He figured if his son saw the old man endlessly working on a worthless ball of twine he would see how his own life was going to turn out.
Little did Mr. Lendskip know he was setting in motion what would become his son’s lifelong passion. Instead of being scared by Johnson’s obsession, Craig was excited to see someone else who enjoyed building nonstop. Craig began his own balls of twine that same night. Unlike Francis, who would only wrap the ever-growing ball, Craig focused on hand-sized balls of varying size including multi-balls, all from the remnants of Francis Johnson’s twine pile. Johnson loved the boy’s gift of sculpting and shared little tips on how to work with the twine. He would occasionally take one of Craig’s little balls and incorporate it into his own growing masterpiece, telling Craig, “You are now part of the Great Ball of Twine, something bigger than yourself, a legacy for Darwin.”
Craig loved the fact he was part of something larger than his life; balls of twine immediately became his destiny, too.
The little boy grew into a wonderful young adult. His father still had great trepidation about his son’s unique gift, but it was clear Craig Lendskip had became a sculptor of twine in the footsteps of his mentor, Francis A. Johnson, the creator and artist of the largest ball of twine.