Centralia man turns recycling into an art form

CENTRALIA, Mo. -- Larry Vennard recycles machinery from former 40-acre farms and creates steel sculptures of giant bugs, animals and extinct dinosaurs.

Twelve years ago, Vennard said, a crisis hit the small farms around Centralia, and farmers sold off their old machinery.

"There's no such thing as a little farmer anymore," Vennard said. "Unless you own 2,000 acres, you can't even afford to combine."

Vennard bought up the scrap metal without an idea of the art that would be spawned from the rusting piles of steel in his yard.

"I started seeing things in the piles," he said. "A lot of people think it's scrap iron. To me, it's legs and body parts."

His first creation, a tyrannosaurus, was born from the blower on a silage cutter, a machine that farmers use to grind corn. Vennard said he suddenly realized it looked just like the head of a T-rex.

The bent tongue of an Allis Chalmers hay baler became the creature's serrated tail, and scrap from the floor of an old hog facility became the beast's abdomen, he said.

Vennard forged an intimate knowledge of welding and steel during a 30-year career in construction. Formerly a welder certified in eight states, Vennard, 53, shifted in 1990 from working on mass transit lines in San Diego to making iron furniture in Centralia.

He and wife Rita, 50, live just north of Centralia. When the first of his metal critters went up in his yard, Vennard said, neighbors thought he was nuts.

"Then there was another one and another. They just kept coming. Pretty soon I was the neighborhood artist," he said.

Rita Vennard appreciates his artistic bent.

"When I started dating Larry, he would draw wild, fantastical M.C. Escher drawings," she said.

It wasn't until Larry Vennard's first sculpture that he united his professional skills with artistic style, finding his medium.

"My real paintbrush is a welding rod," he said.

The head of a roaring dragon rests in front of Vennard's backyard shop. He started the dragon last summer and said he hopes to finish it this summer.

Other sculptures include St. Patrick, who is portrayed throwing a snake that's made from a metal pipe; a sheet-metal alligator; and a triceratops.

"Giving life to a 300-gallon oil barrel is a challenge," Vennard said of the dinosaur's belly. "It really is."

Most of his creatures appear to be animals. Nature inspires Vennard.

"That's all I know. I've been a hunter and fisherman my whole life," he said.

Vennard has won prizes at art festivals for his work and has been commissioned to create sculptures. He sold a triceratops bull made from a 500-gallon oil drum for $3,500, the highest price he's received for one of his pieces.

His lowest-priced sculptures were dragonflies, selling for $400 to $850, and the Vennards charge visitors no fees to view their sculpture garden.

"I think art should be seen; it should be free for people to enjoy," Larry Vennard said.

In fact, the two encourage people to come onto their property and take a look around.

"The highway 'T-rex' is where it's at; you can't miss it," he said.