The shores of Esquimalt Lagoon in Colwood, B.C., are home to a plethora of wildlife. Some are real species, and others are artfully constructed out of scavenged driftwood by a local artist.
The driftwood wildlife sculptures, which take on the form of bald eagles, squirrels, owls, turtles, and more, began appearing at the lagoon in 2018, much to the surprise and enjoyment of beachgoers.
The person behind the operation? Lifelong hobby artist and Colwood local, Paul Lewis.
Lewis was compelled to craft his first driftwood piece when he found himself with a surplus of screws. “I had a bunch of leftover screws from a home project and just decided one day to come down to the lagoon and start putting something together. That became the bald eagle,” recounts Lewis. “I started doing more sculptures and people started noticing them and it kind of exploded from there.”
All of Lewis’ pieces begin with a stroke of inspiration. “I go down to the lagoon and whatever bird I see that morning becomes my inspiration for the day,” he says. Once he’s collected all the pieces of driftwood he needs from the beach, the parts are laid out on a tarp where Lewis visualizes how the animal’s design will come together. “It’s like a big jigsaw puzzle, except you have no instructions.” He then uses a drill to assemble the sculpture, sometimes adding paint if the animal’s colours call for it.
Since 2018, Lewis’ creations have been sparking joy for those who stroll along the beach. “They’ve become a major tourist attraction,” he says. “I think they make a lot of people happy.”
But it hasn’t all been smooth sailing. When Lewis first started, he struggled with vandals. “Almost every weekend I’d find about three structures baseball-batted apart in a million pieces,” he says. The incidents made local news and many folks were outraged that people would destroy the artworks. Lewis though? He laughed it off. “You keep breaking them, I’ll keep making them. There’s more wood than there are vandals,” he says.
For Lewis, art has always been a positive creative outlet. And fashioning the driftwood sculptures, in particular, has become a great source of joy for him. “I get so much satisfaction out of doing driftwood art now. I can do them pretty quickly as opposed to a painting that sometimes takes months or even years to finish,” Lewis says.
While many of his sculptures live beachside, along a roughly 500 foot stretch of Esquimalt Lagoon’s shores, Lewis has also commissioned pieces for various public spaces. One of his favourites is a giant Sasquatch he built for a grocery store in East Sooke, B.C. Lewis has also donated 15 sculptures to the Juan de Fuca Recreation Centre in Colwood, including a memorial to his son who passed away two years ago. The design features a family of bald eagles representing Lewis’ own family, with the baby eagle containing his son’s ashes in a heartfelt gesture of remembrance.
Though Lewis works full-time as a scaffolder, much of his non-working hours are spent tending to the sculptures. “I maintain them constantly,” he says. “Sometimes they’ll lose eyeballs or other limbs due to the wind, or kids will grab them and pull off parts.”
He’s even explored teaching his unique craft to others. In October of 2019, he welcomed about fifteen homeschool students to a workshop at the lagoon. “I made plywood cutouts of turtles and crabs and the students put all their driftwood pieces on them and screwed them down,” he says. “It was a fun experience.”
Lewis dreams of working as a full-time artist, but in the meantime, he says he plans to take summers off to focus on the sculptures—and go fishing on his boat. Currently, there are 22 sculptures on display along the beach for visitors and residents to enjoy. Just leave the baseball bats at home.
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