Crafting a career in customized Santas
Disembodied Santa heads smile up from the tabletop and from behind glass. Velvet coat-clad bodies sit with their legs thrown out. Tiny toys and tools, notes and cellophaned lumps of clay lie on the workbench. A life-size antique wooden sled perches on a trunk.
It’s not the typical Christmastime decorating scheme, but Lindy Evans is no ordinary decorator. She’s not a decorator at all.
Evans is one of Kentucky’s premier artists, a maker of one-of-a-kind Santa figures sculpted in polymer clay. Her Images of Santa Claus, as Evans’ business is called, range in size from six-inch miniatures to fully articulated figures standing 5 feet 7 inches tall, with most figures measuring 12 or 24 inches tall. Once built, bearded, dressed and accessorized, the figures will fetch anywhere between $300 to more than $1,000 each depending on size.
Working from her home studio in Berea, Evans sculpts the figures, each a customized work of art, then adorns them with rosy cheeks and a twinkle in the eye and creates a tailormade outfit in vintage fabrics. Depending on the figure’s theme—workshop, backwoods, traditional, Appalachian—it is accessorized with a sack full of toys, walking stick, lantern, apron, paintbrush or other tool and other items.
“The craftsmanship Lindy conveys is truly remarkable,” says Aly Norton, information specialist at the Kentucky Artisan Center at Berea, where a display of one of Evans’ life-size Santa figures is a guaranteed conversation starter with visitors entering the 25,000-square-foot facility. “From incredible facial detail to hand-selected vintage textiles and toys, each piece is a true embodiment of her dedication to her craft.”
A self-taught artist, Evans has been sculpting the hyper-realistic, highly detailed Santas for more than three decades. Prior to the Santas, Evans had stitched up cloth dolls and animals for her children while living and teaching in Somerset.
“They were all cloth bodies, kind of smishy-faced, and would sit,” she says.
Then she saw a picture in a magazine of an original Santa figure sculpted in polymer clay and dressed in antique fabric and was blown away.
“I thought, ‘That is the prettiest Santa I’ve ever seen.’”
From there Evans’ art evolved through trial and error and talking to doll artists she met at different art shows. She learned how to make an armature (the skeleton or framework that supports a figure being sculpted) as well as how the body stands. She also learned about anatomy.
“I didn’t plan on learning this but had to,” she says.
Evans made her first Santa in 1992 after moving to Berea.
“When I told people I was going to move to Berea to make Santas they thought I’d lost my mind,” she says.
The figures proved to be a perfect fit for Evans, who readily admits she has believed in Santa Claus all her life.
Evans’ figures are collected by legions of fans all over the country. Each is a process that can take weeks to create and dress. Many of the accessories, such a 3-inch sock monkey, snowshoes for the backwoods Santas and many of the toys used in each Santa vignette, are handmade by the artist using the tiniest of tools.
Evans says she lost count long ago of the number of Santa figures she has sculpted over 30-plus years. But make no mistake: Each Evans original is a statement piece.
“Lindy Evans has been a featured artist at the Kentucky Artisan Center since very early on in our 20-year history,” says Norton. “She is a prime example of the incredible talent the Bluegrass State has to offer.”
Evans teaches classes in making Santa figures each July during Berea’s LearnShops, typically setting up shop at the Kentucky Guild of Artists and Craftsmen office in Old Town.
In addition to the Kentucky Artisan Center, Evans’ Santas may be found at the Log House Craft Gallery and Top Drawer Gallery in Berea and, in North Carolina, two Southern Highland Craft Guild galleries: Biltmore Village in Asheville and Moses Cone Manor in Blowing Rock.
- Lindy Evans
- Images of Santa Claus
- (859) 582-2065, lindyclause@gmail.com
- www.lindyevans.com
