By Mary Owen
Joan Jaussaud loves creating garden havens at her Scio home for others to enjoy.
The latest addition is a 450-pound bronze statue of Jesus beckoning to a child. The pieces arrived June 21. Plans for the life-size figures began two years ago between the sculptor and Jaussaud, a 73-year-old former school teacher from California.
“I bought this little place on Thomas Creek when I was still working, spending most of my time in Milpitas, near San Jose,” said Jaussaud of her journey. “There were some beautiful rhododendrons and a view of the river. My goal was to upgrade the property and make gardens.”
Jaussaud has spend the last few years turning her acre-plus of land into a garden similar to that in The Secret Garden, a book that talks about a sickly young boy and his journey back to health. She got the idea after working at a retreat center in Idyllwild after she retired five years ago.
“It was a place for people to have healing prayer,” she said of the retreat center. “I felt that people need to know the Lord is here, and come to him like a little child … the Lord is inviting them. That seems to be meaningful to some people who are hurting from life’s problems.”
Since she leaves the digging to others these days, Jaussaud works with Stayton nursery owner Judy Yarnell to design her collective garden areas where “hurting folks can drop by, pray a little, and find peace,” she said.
“I have a rose arbor and a deck by the river,” she said. “I also have a rock garden and a waterfall. And I bought the property next door, which added a little Redwood garden.
“Even my neighbor is turning her front yard into little windy paths,” she added. “The two places are getting to look really nice.”
Jaussaud would like to place her garden, once it matures, to be on the benefit tour for the Brown House. And, of course, the highlight of her tour will be the sculptures, which she said she never dreamt she could own.
“I could never have afforded them, or so I thought,” she said.
Then she met Carla Moss, a sculptor and designer, also from Milpitas.
“She started working on the statues two years ago,” Jaussaud said. “And now they are here – beautiful art pieces right here in Scio!”
Moss, who has also had a successful career in painting and printmaking, has sculpted works as small as 2 inches and as large as 17 feet. Two of her sculptures – “Cartwheels” and “The Flute Player” – are displayed at the Milpitas City Hall. A city commissioner and an active signature member of Women Artists of the West, she loves working with metals. Her work can be highly abstract, incorporating kinetic arts, moving wheels and industrial elements – or it can be a tiny bronze fawn lying in ivy.
“For me, it had to be Jesus,” Jaussaud said. “When the idea of making the garden came to me, I didn’t know if it was whether He wanted me to do this or because I love gardens, but He has opened doors.”
Moss used her friend, Amiel Silvestre, to pose for the look and feel for Jesus’ positioning, and plaster casts of her husband, Stoney’s feet. The child’s hands are casts of her niece, Grace, from Montana.
Moss took 10 months to create the figures, first in clay and wax, creating rubber molds before re-assembling the statues in wax. Next was to send the statues to the Fire Bird Foundry at the Monterey Sculpture Center in Marina, Calif., to be cast and molten bronze poured into the hollow shells that were created.
Later, after cleaning, the many pieces of the two statues were welded together, the seams ground and polished, and a patina was applied. The final steps were to wax and seal the works before shipping them to Scio.
Today, the Jesus statue sits on a cement bench out front between two trees, surrounded by boxes of day lilies and rhododendrons, which will turn different shades of purple when in bloom, “befitting for a King,” Jaussaud said. The little boy faces Jesus just a few feet away.
“There is a concrete bench for people to sit on nearby,” she added. “They can just rest and enjoy.”
Jaussaud, when she isn’t visiting her 100-year-old mother in California, can be found many days puttering in her garden. Her favorite place to rest is near the statues of Jesus and the boy.
“The Lord is here, his arms are open wide, and we need to run into them,” she said of a message she hopes the statues convey. “He is here for us to come and enjoy!”
