Puffins for Elliston

Tourism Elliston, who hosts the annual Bird Island Puffin Festival in Elliston, Newfoundland asked Neil and I to help out with this year's festival, and this was my contribution.

The annual Puffin Festival celebrates the puffins, root cellars, and various other cultural gems found in Elliston. During our summer stay here in Elliston, we met some of the people who run the festival and they asked us if we had any ideas for this year's festival. Since I'm a big fan of public art and getting people outdoors, I suggested a puffin scavenger hunt of sorts. We could create large painted wood puffins and put them around town for people to find. And people could take pictures with them if they wanted to. 

Thankfully they liked my idea, so I came up with 6 different puffin designs and created templates for them to be cut out of wood. Once they were cut out, Neil and I primed them, then we painted various designs on the puffins. 

Most of the designs were of course inspired by Newfoundland and well puffins. After they dried, they were installed around town. Here is each puffin, and where it was placed: 

These puffins have been up around town since the Festival and I hope they make an appearance every year. But if they do or don't, at least they brought a little goofy fun to the town for a weekend :)