Pubdate: Wed, 17 Aug 2005
Source: Indianapolis Star (IN)
Copyright: 2005 Indianapolis Newspapers Inc.
Contact: http://www.indystar.com/help/contact/letters.html
Website: http://www.starnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/210
Author: Will Higgins
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)
Note: See second section, 'Smoke Signals'

ARTIST CARVES NICHE FOR HIMSELF AT FAIRGROUNDS

Tony Compton, who comes from Paragon, has been at the Indiana State Fair 
all day, every day creating art.

He uses a chainsaw to turn logs into sculptures. Most logs become bears. He 
has also made eagles, cobras and birds but finds that most people who buy 
chainsaw sculpture want bears.

He doesn't know why, but he accommodates. On Tuesday he started to turn a 
6-foot log into a bear holding a fish. He fired up his chainsaw, and 
immediately a crowd of about a dozen people gathered around, just like he'd 
said they would.

Compton is 48 and burly. He wore overalls and no shirt Tuesday. He doesn't 
mark where he'll cut. He just digs in with the chainsaw.

He seems to tune out his audience. "I go into carving mode and just . . . 
carve," he says.

"That Stihl is nice," said onlooker Richard White, Crawfordsville, 
referring to the brand of chainsaw Compton uses. "I've got one at home, and 
it's hard to beat, I don't care what anybody says."

Compton liked art in high school but never studied it seriously. Three 
years ago, he had an epiphany: He saw a piece of chainsaw art, a mushroom, 
and figured he could do that. He had a tree-trimming business and a 
firewood business, so he was handy with a chainsaw. He went out and made 
his own mushroom the very next day.

He has done well enough in his brief art career that he recently retired 
from his firewood and tree-trimming businesses to focus exclusively on his 
sculptures, which sell at prices from $100 to several thousand dollars.

Smoke Signals

The variety of offerings inside the fairgrounds' Exposition Hall is 
staggering. Among the items touted in the scores of booths: sunrooms, John 
Deere hats, a "recoiling water hose," Vincennes University and weed.

Yes, marijuana. That booth is manned by the Indiana chapter of the National 
Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML.

"At the fair we're emphasizing hemp oil," said Steve Dillon, an 
Indianapolis attorney who is president of the national NORML organization 
and a longtime champion of legalization. Hemp oil is a derivative of the 
hemp plant, currently illegal to grow in the United States.

Dillon reasons that if farmers were permitted to grow hemp, two good things 
could come from it: The farmers could make money, and the nation could 
reduce its dependence on foreign oil.

That sounds universally pleasant. But Dillon didn't shy from NORML's chief 
task: to make it legal to smoke pot. Brochures that lead off with "It's 
time to stop arresting responsible marijuana smokers" were right up front.

A Clean Sweep

Felisha Thomas, who makes $7 an hour as a janitor at the fair, says she is 
struck by how tidy people are these days. She worked the fair for several 
years in the late 1990s, and back then she was always picking up someone's 
trash.

"Back then there was way more work to do," she said Tuesday as she searched 
the fairgrounds' Main Street for something, anything, to pick up.
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MAP posted-by: Beth