Chris Clatterbuck from Broadmoor Baptist Church in Madison, MS brings us this great VBS design.
From Chris: Broadmoor’s WOW Week is a VBS experience that turns the Lifeway model to 11. With 1,300 kids attending Monday through Friday from all over the Jackson, MS area it’s an amazing week that consumes the entire church. With the theme for this year “In the Wild” we knew we wanted giant animals on the stage. So in 2018 we asked Mickey Hansen to dream up something big…and big he did. Mickey is an architect by trade, but an artist at heart. Using typical craft supplies – typically cereal boxes, cardboard, butcher paper, wood glue, and 2×4 – his imagination and engineering bring ideas to life.
He brought a 13ft tall cobra, 4ft tall monkey, 10ft tall elephant, another low lying snake for the tree, and a 4ft long bird. All cut, formed, and painted by hand with scissors!
All of the skin for the new animals was paper towels coated in water and wood glue then painted.
Mickey started building four of the five animals in November 2018 and finished painting May 23, 2019 with over 1,000 hours of building. The 13ft cobra was in his living room since a DNOW in 2004! And it holds its own against his new creations.
To make matters even crazier he builds the animals to tear down into multiple parts to transport by truck/van. When they’re assembled they are self supporting and the parts are sized to fit…no screws/nails/hangers except for the underlying 2×4’s.
Mickey serves in the Children’s Ministry at Broadmoor and gives his time to build these wonderful animals, puppet trees, and anything else that brings imagination to life.
On top of the amazing creatures, we had a wonderful 5 man construction team that built the 25ft tall tree onstage covered in slabs from the saw mill. The branches were constructed from 2×4’s and wrapped with butcher paper. The canopy was made from camo netting and faux tree floral. The tree took just under two weeks to build and was assembled in place.
Process Photos
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