Post #449442 by Mo-Eye on Fri, Apr 24, 2009 2:46 PM

Here's another one, that gives a little insight to his personality.

Evening Independant - June 27, 1975

Carvings Reflect Past Era

Madeira Beach - Frank Schmudde has spent the past four months in a world where people fit in your hand and monsters walk the earth.

"I can close my eyes and see it," he says.

What he sees and has created is a miniature world of thunder lizards, bizarre foliage and a colony of cave dwellers, with more colors than a kaleidoscope.

Frank Schmudde is a pleasure to watch. As perspiration beads across his tanned body, a deft wrist guides and old steak knife through a chunk of styrofoam and emerges 15 minutes later with a 4 inch Neanderthal ready to stalk a 10 inch Mastadon.

To understand what the 55 year old Madeira Beach man is doing, you must know something about his past. A boat builder by trade, he took to carving and working with molded plastics 15 years ago when he created the Polynesian decorations for the Hawaiian Inn in Tampa. That led to motifs for the new Kapok Tree on Duhme Road, Busch Garden's Boma and creation of the strange figures that adorn many area miniature golf courses.

All that time a dream milled around in the back of his mind that he would one day re-create the past. The past, he laughs, so long ago he could use his imagination any way he pleased.

Night after night he at down and beefed up on primeval, finding an old book here, reading a story there and etching it into his great plan to one day build "Millions BC."

In March he rented a tin shed near Bay Pines War Veterans Park and set out - 12 to 13 hours a day, seven days a week - to build himself a trailer and the dream to go inside.

With hunks of styrofoam ant that old steak knife he got during a gas station give away, Schmudde began carving out Ornithopods, Ankelosaurs, Sauropods, Stegosaurs and the beastly Tyrannosaurus - 60 of them, to be exact. Everything, he decided, would be 1/12 the size of the real thing... so it would fit in his 32 foot long trailer.

No prehistoric countryside would be complete without a waterfall and running stream, so he built one. The cave dwellers are warmed by tiny lights, the skies are filled with birds and a storm over the mountains, and disobedient Neanderthal children are chased by a lizard.

All this he did without plans except for the sketch he created in his mind. when he was stumped with "How do you make the sky look real and not have a crease in it," he flew to Washington DC, spent an hour in the Smithsonian Institution galleries and flew home. "I made a note on how they did it and came on back," he says. "There wasn't any reason to stay longer."

Which brought up another question: "How do you go about carving a horned Triceratops?" "Simple," says Schmudde, with a reply as old as the creatures he was creating, "you just cut away everything that doesn't look like a dinosaur."

"You have to talk to these characters," he smiles, painting the body of some strange looking armored beast, "and bring them something to feed on or they'll eat up the trees. I worked for the little people too (all 47 of them). They didn't have to paint their own caves, I did all of that." He built up their caves with stacks of styrofoam sheets.

He uses plastic floral arrangements, cannibalizing a leaf here and a flower there to come up with the plant he wants and then planting it in the styrofoam soil. "My wife says only God can make a tree but I tell her it's okay because I already got permission."

But it all isn't for fun. He wants to start touring the state - Maybe spending a summer in Gatlinburg, Tenn. - and charge admission to his project. He has built an awning and queue to keep visitors out of the sun and rain.

This fall the display will be available for organizations to rent as a money raising project. "It's fun but it has to provide a living."

There are a few finishing touches left to go on his prehistoric Lilliput - "There always will be," he says - but it's open now to the public, through July 4, on Gulf Boulevard at 144th Avenue to raise money for the Madiera Beach Chamber of Commerce new building fund.

"For relaxation, I'm just going to keep working on it," he says. "I'll get around to a narrated tape and there's some sign painting yet to do, but I've got other things going around in my head to do next." What for instance? "I was thinking about another one. How do you think it would look in 1/4 scale?"