It all started when…

…I mentioned to a friend of mine in 2017 or 18 about an idea of knight garden gnomes. It was a “wouldn’t that be cool” kind of idea, not ever expecting anything would come of it. Then one day said friend, the talented Jason Bergen, gave to me a hand-drawn birthday card with a picture of a gnome knight on the front. It was awesome and in that moment I could see this becoming a real statue, or even many statues, and decided I would see if I could make it happen. The name Guardin’ Gnomes jumped out at me and Jason began drawing gnomes while I attempted to create a website and find a sculptor.

Being passed from one “I know a guy” to another, I finally got in contact with a sculptor who lived quite near to me. He turned out to be the talented Norm Williams, who has done the larger-than-life, bronze Pat Quinn and Roger Nealson statues that stand in front of Rogers Arena in Vancouver, home of the Vancouver Canucks. He made me an offer to come down to his studio to give sculpting a shot myself and give me pointers over my shoulder. So unexpectedly I found myself, never having sculpted before attempting to create a gnome.

Working in northern Alberta while living near Vancouver, BC I worked at the dream of Guardin’ Gnomes while back home on my days off. There were some bumps along the way, but I think the original sculpture turned out pretty decent for a beginner.

Sometime during this process, how I can’t recall, I was struck with an idea, completely out of the blue. I sat down and wrote a story about a gnome squire having an adventure with the Guardin’ Gnome knights and a world began to take shape. Then, unexpectedly I wrote another one and the world began to take more shape. Then I wrote a couple more and stated to come up with a kingdom and a history and several heroes who I hoped to make statues out of. Most of my friends seemed to enjoy the stories and soon thought maybe I should look into publishing them with Jason illustrating them. My focus with Guardin’ Gnomes shifted towards the creative writing, with the idea of gnome sculptures based on characters from the world being co-release them along side the books as they are published.

And that is a brief intro into how this whole Guardin’ Gnome endeavour began. It has been a long slow process thus far, but quite an enjoyable one.