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Fingers forward, the giant hand was quite a sight speeding down the brief stretch that turns Hwy 2 into Hwy 18 near Clyde, but within a couple hours of that passby, it was down and on a new cement pad out at Mossy Trails — a rural outdoor gallery Johnson and his mom Marilyn run with seasonal events, including annual mushroom walks led by Edmonton mycologist Robert Rogers, this year cancelled by the pandemic.
Immediately, Johnson’s dad was hooking up a “redneck drone” — a GoPro camera attached to a fully extended ladder affixed to a tractor shovel — to shoot aerial footage for an upcoming episode of his son’s Shop Time project on eternalfamily.tv.
Even though its thumb is now unattached, rumours of the hand’s demise suddenly felt premature.
“I was thinking about it this morning,” Johnson said Thursday morning as the world anxiously awaited on American election results. “I do think I want to do a little bit of conservation work on it initially. This old guy has been taken out of the inner city and gets to live amongst the trees.
“I wanna bandage him up so he can enjoy it a little longer.”
He adds, “It’s really weird how everything in my original intent and statement still works. But there’s something new to learn for myself now that it’s in this different setting.”
Instead of expressive street graffiti, as one example, some of the art out at Mossy Trails has already had new “collaboration” with rutting moose, adding their antler marks to human efforts. It’s likely birds might now nest inside the gaps. Either way, down a winding ATV road, a pair of donkeys are now the main gallery attendants, braying for attention.
Johnson laughs. “I’m lucky I still get to learn something new.”
