Haunted Hobby
Cameron Haid has always liked drawing, and one of his favorite subjects is haunted houses. So when the 11-year-old took one of his haunted house sketches to show to private art teacher Michael Rehm, the most natural step was to bring the drawing to life.
After months of work, the Chicora youth turned common materials like cardboard, toothpicks, pipe cleaners, string and clay into a haunted house model that would make Tim Burton proud. The creepy old mansion features a boneyard and menacing man-eating trees.
"Every year at Halloween, I started drawing haunted houses. I kind of like the way they look," said Cameron. "I just started drawing them a long time ago."
Cameron, a sixth grader at Chicora Elementary School, said he has drawn many different versions over the years.
"This was something that he would draw a lot of the time," said his mother, Darla. "His friends at school all call him 'doodle' because he is forever doodling and drawing."
She said Cameron showed his interest in art "from when he was little, as young as 3 or 4 years old. That's how he spends his time, laying on the floor in front of the TV drawing. He also likes to draw on the computer."
For the past three years, he has been taking Saturday lessons at the Butler Public Library with Rehm. That's where Cameron's haunted house took shape.
"He actually started this house at the end of last August (2007)," Rehm said. "The hope was to get it done by last Halloween. ... By last Halloween, he had the cardboard covered. He started painting it around January this year and worked on and off until April or May."
The haunted house project, which sits on a plywood base, consists of a framework of cardboard boxes and tubes. The entire model is wrapped in a material called Rigid Wrap — strips of gauze embedded with plaster.
After it has dried hard, it can be painted. "They used to make casts out of it," Rehm said, "but now they use fiberglass, so the artists took it over."
The project, Rehm said, included "a lot of fine detail" for a student of Cameron's age. "He put an awful lot of time in it. For being as young as he is, to have that kind of stick-to-itiveness. We did take a few breaks along the way."
The details include a broken down toothpick and string fence and trees that look as though they're about to snatch unwary visitors in their grasp.
"There are two or three flowerlike creatures with teeth — scary Venus flytraps," Rehm said. In deciding on other details to include in the mansion's front yard, Cameron chose to paint bones that might crawl around on the ground.
Cameron said he didn't have a favorite part of the project. "I kind of liked all of it," he said, but admits that he is "probably done for a little while. I may do more a little later. I'm not so sure yet."
Rehm also admits Cameron may have liked drawing the haunted house more than the sometimes-tedious process of building it.
"I think he spent more time on it than he thought he would. I don't think he'll do any haunted houses for a while. ... I suspect he'll do something again, maybe in high school."
Cameron says while he likes drawing haunted houses, he's not a big fan of the real-life versions.
"I just kind of like drawing them," he says. "I'm not into all that scary stuff."
When asked what his favorite subject is at school, Cameron piped up "science," then adds, "and also art."
The haunted house will be on display through Sunday at New Dimension Comics in the Clearview Mall.
