I had made a red gecko that was on my studio wall for several months with no interested customers. The prevailing advise was that it was the wrong color and should be green. The only way to change the color is to paint over it with opaque thick layers of paint. One key signature of my work is thin layers of transparent stains built up to show the wood underneath. This left a really unfortunate option of carving off the top layer of stains and restraining it. If you think this is a painful process you are right on target. Granted it is only removing a thin layer, but any errors can ruin the piece since it was carved to exactly the right shape prior to staining.

I put the green one up on the wall ready for willing customers to want to hand him in their home. The first night he was up a local glass artist came in to buy the RED GECKO. Apparently lizards like this gecko are talismans of glass work since they would crawl into the warm embers and he wanted Red to match his studio walls.

So I carved a new Red Gecko for him. Lesson learned was trust your instincts on these projects and don’t go looking for advice or validation from others. I gave the green gecko away.