Other than the time he got trapped under a 500-pound bear made of tires, Bill Starcher is like any artist, coaxing beauty and fantasy from the ordinary.
Starcher’s art supplies are others’ junk: screws, cast-off utensils, discarded barrels and garden hoses. He collects odds and ends from thrift stores, scrap yards, friends and strangers. Anonymous patrons occasionally leave boxes of spoons and forks in his driveway, knowing they’ll eventually end up as smooth scales on a tail or become strings of jagged teeth.
Fanciful creatures, many larger than life, are scattered around Starcher’s Portage County home and tucked in a backyard gazebo. The oversized objects match his oversized imagination— which is how he found himself nearly crushed by a bear in his workshop. It slipped as he tried to reposition the bear, saved when its steel-reinforced ear got snagged on the workbench.
Starcher, a retired steelworker, lives with his wife and his biggest fan, Cheryl, on a sprawling property near Mantua. Two wall calendars keep track of events where Starcher shares his work: fairs, festivals, fundraisers, schools, restaurants and anywhere else people want to see them.
In Starcher’s world, art is meant to be seen, touched, climbed on, and closely examined. He enjoys the delight and surprise when people recognize fork handles, tire strips and other found objects in his sculptures—the ordinary turned extraordinary.
The Mermaid
Starcher makes things as he always has, having acquired metalworking and woodworking skills in his Ravenna High School shop classes. Curious and a natural scavenger, he’d find objects that others discarded. His house is tastefully decorated with his handiwork: kitchen cabinets, rocking horses, a Volkswagen Beetle car he made into a chair—each room a testament to his creativity.
Until six years ago, he was mostly a woodworker. That changed when he took a trip to Orlando and visited Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Museum. There he spotted a mermaid made of spoons. He was hooked.
The mermaid inspired him to buy a welder and tackle his first project: a prehistoric fish made from silverware. It wasn’t bad, in fact, it was better than not bad. Starcher gathered more art supplies and worked on bigger projects: a massive Sasquatch clad in strips of tires, a pair of wolves covered in 8,000 forks, an eagle dressed in butter knife blades, a snake with silverware skin. His favorite is a silvery spinosaurus dinosaur made with utensils.
“I’m a salvage king,” Starcher says with a wide smile. Retired from the steel mills, his days are busy with making and sharing art. He loads his truck and trailer with his animals and takes them where they’re appreciated. Starcher wants children to climb the wooly mammoth and other creatures, take selfies and marvel.
“I’m not the best artist because I can’t draw worth a darn,” Starcher says. “I got a D in high school art,” he tells students when he’s invited to local schools.
He’s never sold a piece and never will.
“Everybody sells stuff. Nobody does anything for free anymore,” Starcher says. “I want to be the guy who gives stuff away.”
You can find more of Starcher’s creations on Instagram (@billstarcherart) and on his Facebook page.
Marie Elium once made a windchime out of silverware. She’s the editor of Northeast Ohio Boomer magazine.
