A solid business

OSHKOSH
— Cindy Glatz said it's nice to have a farmyard full of animals, especially when they don't have to be fed and she never has to call the veterinarian.

The animals are sculpted from concrete, stone and resin, and they make up a good percentage of the 6,000 lawn ornaments on display at Heavy Critters, a family business owned by Mrs. Glatz, her husband, Tom, and brother and sister-in-law, Ron and Linda Wachholz.
The four hatched the idea of marketing concrete statues after an impromptu stop at a dealer in southern Illinois. None of them had ever had statue collections or even taken an interest in yard ornaments before that trip 10 years ago.
'By the time we got home, in seven hours, we had our business name picked out, and we got started,' Mrs. Glatz said.
'The reason we called it Heavy Critters was we thought we'd be doing a lot of cows and pigs and chickens, because of being in the farm and rural area,' she said. 'We didn't sell as many of those as we thought.'
They decided not to sell mythical creatures.
'Within about two weeks into this, that's what everyone wanted, so we now have a whole selection of gargoyles and griffins.'
They also have cherubs, angels, benches, well covers, fountains, sports heroes, urns, deer, Grecian goddesses, bunnies, babies, birdbaths, dragons, memorial plaques and a 1,400-pound lifelike timber wolf.
'You can get anything you want here, and that's what makes us so unique,' Mrs. Glatz said.
Their first inventory, which covered 30 feet between two trees in the front yard of the family's former dairy farm, now fills six buildings and most of the surrounding yard. There is talk of using part of the house for future display area.
If they don't have a requested item on the grounds, they keep a wish list and go hunting. Mr. Wachholz, a farmer and livestock trucker, is the heavy hauler, traveling among about 22 manufacturers, mostly in the Midwest.
Finding an item for a customer is sometimes a game of hide-and-seek, said Mrs. Glatz, who does the ordering. She said most concrete statuary manufacturers are very independent, don't keep good records of inventory and often sell molds among themselves.
'If you had a good product and you want it again, you might not even be able to find out who's got it,' she said. 'If it's in his yard, you can buy it. If it's not there, too bad, so sad, and maybe it'll be there next time.'
The partners at one time were tempted to make their own statuary, but molds can cost $1,000 each. An artist has to sculpt an original piece of statuary to make each mold, and many of them are art pieces with intricate detailing.
While they don't make their own statuary, they will paint anything a customer wants.
'When we thought we had everything planned, nobody ever thought about who was going to do what,' Mrs. Glatz said, 'and we
never
thought about who was going to do the airbrushing.'
About half of the ornaments go out in their natural state, but the other half are painted.
'Some people think they can do it for less, but everything we do requires at least six steps: binder, primer, base, color, airbrush, acrylic spray,' Mrs. Glatz said. 'We don't care what you pick out. If it's a pink and yellow polka-dot or realistic, it's the same price.'
Mr. Glatz does most of the priming and basic artistry, but Mrs. Wachholz does the finish work. Her first attempt looked like a coloring book project, Mrs. Glatz said, but she is now skilled enough that bucks attacked one of their painted deer statues on two different occasions.
Mr. Glatz also does repairs and likes to have those projects on hand from January through March when the business is closed.
He said the life of concrete statuary is about 10 years, 'but it depends on how well you take care of it and how the winters are on it.'
Statuary should be set on gravel or a cement footing to prevent moisture from soaking into the bottom, and pieces that can catch and hold water should be brought inside, turned upside down or kept under a loose cover for the winter.
Concrete can be fragile and shouldn't be bumped with a lawnmower or weed eater.
Despite that, they last longer than resin pieces and don't tip over in the wind.
Mrs. Glatz said she often gets phone calls from people asking if she has a certain animal.
'Yeah, we've got it,' she said, indicating everything from 2 pounds to 2,000 pounds, 'but you've got to come and look.'

Sara Bredesen may be reached at stbrede@hotmail.com.