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By Victoria Advocate
 SEADRIFT - Bill McGill is an unlikely looking patron of the arts, a big,
good-natured guy in coastal shorts and sandals who does computer work from his home just outside
Seadrift on the highway to Port O'Connor. He commissioned from artist Dieter Erhard a sculpture
for the front yard of his new house. McGill said, "Dieter does a lot to promote culture here.
I commissioned the piece because I wanted to help, and because I like art."
The sculpture is a 15-foot tall abstraction of a bluebonnet. It has a stem of concrete cylinders,
red, blue and yellow. There is a collar of concrete studded with metal and some rocks that Erhard
brought back from a trip to the West last year. The blossoms atop the stem are of stainless steel
and, mounted on a hidden spring, bob in the south breeze
Erhard, director of the Seadrift Art Center, more commonly known as the Artboat, said, "He gave me total freedom. He told me he would trust me to do the right thing. That is very unusual, but very like him."
Erhard is German and has a gallery in Erlangen in addition to his Seadrift gallery. Faced with the problem of selecting a subject for the piece, he looked back to his childhood in Germany. The bluebonnet seemed a natural to him. He said, "We have bluebonnets in Germany, but they are called lupines there, so it is something we have in Germany and in Texas."
McGill said, "My wife, Bridget, is part Texas German, so that connected for her, too."
Erhard said, "When I rode my bicycle as a child, I'd see the bluebonnets.
I would've liked to pick them, but I couldn't pick them."
He explained that picking the flowers was forbidden, so he sort of picked his bluebonnet here when he made the sculpture.
Erhard said, "They had just built his house and we were looking for materials on the place. I saw that big piece of metal tubing. It was going to be a barbecue pit."
The intended barbecue pit became a mold for the thickest part of the stem.
The whole mass of inorganic materials achieves an organic feel. Erhard said, "So you work and you make from the concrete, flesh, or from the concrete, wood, or from the steel, a flower."
Erhard said that one reason he was happy to get the commission was to get a bit of art on the far side of town. "We have all these things for people coming in, but there was nothing for people going on to Port O'Connor. Now maybe they will see it and say 'Ah.'"
McGill worked for Erhard before Erhard worked for McGill. Erhard said, "Buddy Cross owned the boat we made into the art boat. We asked him who was into computers, and he recommended Bill McGill. Bill's my computer guy. He did our Web site."
Erhard said that when McGill heard that Erhard's father had died, he immediately made a contribution to plant a tree in memory of the dead man. "That impressed me," Erhard said. "He didn't even know my father."
McGill said, "I've always liked art. Two of my children, Kristi and Curtis, won prizes for their drawing when they were in school, and I liked that, but they didn't keep at it."
He has original paintings hanging in his house along with a bunch of family photos. He said Bridget designed the house and he drew up a set of plans on a CAD program. She likes the sculpture. "And don't forget my better half," McGill said. "I wouldn't be able to put that up there without her approval."
He has hidden lights for the big flower at night. "It's a real soft light, not an overbearing light, and it really looks great at night."
He gives phone directions by the flower. "I'm the second mailbox. And we got a sculpture ... you can't miss it."
McGill has commissioned two more pieces from Erhard, one for each side of the driveway coming into the house. As McGill raises peacocks, lots of peacocks, Erhard is thinking maybe a reference to that for one of the works.
"A peacock, you know? But abstract."
And for the other? He just did a very nice rockfish. He sold it to a client in Rockport. He's thinking about a rockfish, using some more of the Rocky Mountain rock he still has left. Or, who knows?
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