Puzzle Dave

An RCB interview with Cabbagetown Atlanta artist Dave Dechant

Dave at the entrance to his art bunker

It has come to my attention that some folks don’t understand this is a podcast installment of the Red Clay Bestiary. Read the post for sure, but if you want to hear the interview, and you should, click the play button below or listen to it on SoundCloud.

The neighborhood of Cabbagetown, just east of downtown Atlanta, sports a stone shark which, were it not for the cover of trees, would be visible from space. A lot of folks know about the shark—it’s also visible from car windows at least fleetingly at low-foliage times of the year. Not as many folks know about its creator, one Reverend David Dechant, minister of art. Dave is an artist in the best sense of the word: he undertakes to make wild and bizarre things for absolutely no other reason than that he’s a human being still in touch with the creative spark. 

Landshark

I met Dave several years ago when he was renting a studio next to that which my band used at the time. He used his space to assemble an 8,000-piece puzzle, a project which took many months. My bandmates and I watched his progress with great interest—every time we got together to rehearse we’d go check to see what else he’d gotten done, and since I didn’t know his last name at the time I just called him Puzzle Dave. Turns out he has many monikers, but to my thinking Puzzle Dave is perfect, as it conjures up not just the notion of a guy that likes puzzles, but also a certain mischievous mystical quality, which is Dave in spades.

Dave and the puzzle by which we were introduced

Speaking of spades, Dave used one to dig a giant bunker a dozen yards from the shark. Every few weeks I’d stop by his place and check out the progress of this immense hole he dug out largely by hand over a period of many months, marveling at the staggering effort he was putting into the sort of project most city-dwelling modern humans would not be at all comfortable with.  When it was large enough he had a container put into it, and now it serves as his studio, completely invisible from the street and insulated by a blanket of earth from neighbors weary of the sounds of power tools. 

Dave’s latest project involves hundreds of thousands of wood cubes. Pictured is his wood block Banksy homage.

That’s Dave, at least from the outside. When you get to talking to him the rational impetus for these and his other crazy projects becomes a little more clear, and the crazy sloughs away, leaving a prominent kernel of ambition untethered from the dreary impositions of late capitalist society. He’s a force of nature, making things of beauty. He’s not world famous; not American famous, or Georgia famous. He’s not really even Atlanta famous, though he’s arguably Cabbagetown famous. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get to know him. You owe it to yourself to give him a listen, because you’ll find out what a person can do, because Dave is testing the limits. 

A small detail of the many objects embedded in the walls leading down into the bunker. Many of the items were recovered during the laborious digging.

Photos: Artem Nazarov
Audio engineering: Clem Birdwhistle
Music: “Decades,” performed by Aaron Gentry and the Front Porch Session Players

I can’t just sign off without one more of Artem’s marvelous photos, so here’s a farewell until next time:

The art yard in all its glory. The bunker is located just off camera on the right, and the shark lies to the left of the basketball hoop.