Hello and welcome back to then again, my name is Sophie Monsabias. I'm the museum services manager here at the Northeast Georgia History center. And I am here with Mr. Rick Spears, who is a paleo artist and the exhibit designer at Fern Bank Science center. So good morning. Awesome. We're so glad to have you here. I'm excited to be interviewing you today because for people who don't know, we had a forum here at the history center a couple weeks ago, and Rick Spears was our guest, and I wasn't here for that. And I told our operations manager that I was really interested in what you do, and I wanted to speak to you if I could.

Sure.

And she was like, why don't you interview him for the podcast?

Awesome.

So that's why I'm here today. I'm excited. So could you tell us a little bit about what it is that you do?

Well, on a day to day basis, I design and fabricate exhibits for Fernbank science Center in Atlanta, which is not the Museum of Natural History there. Why they named both places Fernbank, I'll never know. But we were first. We're a part of the DeKalb county school system, and we started in 1967, so we've been around quite a while. And then the natural history museum was an offshoot of that. So at one point, we were kind of symbiotic relationship, but since then, we've kind of branched off and gone our own separate ways of different from us now and separate.

So you're entirely different, but you have the same name.

That's right. And the area where our science center is, is called Fernbank Forest.

Oh, my gosh.

And there's a Fernbank school across the street.

Is there a bank? A fern bank bank?

Fernbank bank would be awesome, but no.

Okay, well, how long have you been there?

I've been there a little over 20 years.

Oh, wow. All right, well, so what exactly, as a paleo artist, what does that mean?

Well, it is where you take fossil remains as your guide and then reconstruct the animal how it may have looked in life with the skin on. I put the skin back on the bones.

Okay. Because there's a big dinosaur. Well, now I'm thinking.

Sorry.

Now I'm thinking of Fern bank, the larger one. But I know when you walk in there, there's like a big dinosaur, right?

Sure. They've got skeletal mounts there. Yeah.

So are those real, or are those something that you make?

No. Well, I have made fossil replicas before, which is. Whereas I would sculpt bones or make bone casts or something. But those are actually casts, okay. Because the real bones would be way too heavy to mount, especially on the big, long neck sauropod. But also, they don't have all of the skeleton, so they have to use conjecture or base bones off of other animals and kind of give you the complete picture by putting together a skeleton.

Okay. Yeah. Those are like the things you don't think about as a kid.

Oh, yeah. You just go, oh, man, a dinosaur.

Yeah. And then you find out the truth.

The dark truth ruined childhood.

Yeah. That was one of the reasons I was interested in talking to you is because that's such a unique job. I feel like that's the kind of job you don't really think about when you think about museums. So how did you find out about it? How did you get into doing that?

Well, you know how little kids love dinosaurs, and we think it's maybe some kind of dinosaur flu that kids get, and most of them outgrow it. But then some of us, we're terminal. We are going to love dinosaurs for the rest of our lives. So that's what happened to me. And I've always made models and drawn prehistoric animals and such. And then I had an opportunity to use some of my models in a museum, a new museum. And from there, they said, we'll just come be our exhibits person. I said, okay. And that's what happened. I instantly became professional.

Wow. So you were like, would you say you were in the right place at the right time?

I was, yeah. I'd worked in advertising for a newspaper in Athens.

Oh, wow.

And then fortunately, I got fired.

Oh.

So I did a lot of freelance work, just artwork and such. And in the meantime, I made some dinosaur models. And then when I found out about a new museum opening at the four h center in Eatington, I said, hey, would you guys like some models? And they looked at them and they said, yeah, these are nice. But then they talked, and they needed an exhibits person, so that's where I came in.

Oh, cool. How did you get into the. Were you doing, like, dinosaur casting? Because you said you were an artist already, right?

Yes.

Okay. So were you doing casting? Was the dinosaur part. I'm guessing you were doing the art part as part of your being or the casting part as part of being an artist. And was the dinosaur part, like, the passion?

Well, like I said, I've always been crazy about dinosaurs, and when I got into molding and casting, that actually was something I had to learn on the job when I started, because there's all these materials like silicones and urethanes and these plastics and rubbers and stuff that you can use to make to make molds and casts of bones or models. So it was kind of like learning as I went. I'm not an expert by any means because they're always coming out with new materials. It was really neat to be able to. When I became an exhibits person, I got to learn the tools of the trade on the job, and I was really fortunate to have that happen. For me, it's like any other job, you have techniques and tools and materials that you use for that job. So I kind of learned as I needed to.

Was there anyone there to show you the ropes?

Not really. And this was pre Internet. I had done a lot of reading ahead of time, and I'd actually spoken to some other exhibit type people, designers and stuff. And, you know, they said, well, I made this out of Xyz, and you go, going to get me some Xyz and do that. So it's just picking up tips from others or. This is kind of a goofy story, though. A long time ago, I was in Augusta, Augusta, Georgia, and happened to be down at this downtown section where the buildings were kind of abandoned. But I looked inside of one, and there was a life size allosaurus in the building, and you could tell somebody was making it. And I was just fascinated by that. And I called around and finally found out who was doing it, and they told me what material they were using. So you know what? I got some of that material and made my own allosaurus head. So that was one of the first models I made.

That is so, like, would that be serendipity?

It was totally just, I'm in Augusta, Georgia, and there's an allosaurus in a building.

And then the fact that you had to call around.

Yes, and I used a dial up phone. So it's been a while.

Did you ever see yourself getting into museums prior to this?

No, I didn't. I have a degree in graphic design from the University of Georgia, and at the time, it seemed like everybody was going into advertising, which that's what I did, too. As soon as I got out of college, I got a job at a studio where we did artwork for advertising agencies. Now I'm dating myself. Do you remember the tv show bewitched?

I know of it.

Okay. Anyway, Samantha Stevens, her husband Darren, worked for an ad agency, and he would draw up mock ups of what the ads would look like. Well, apparently, ad agencies don't have their own artists like that anymore. So I worked for a studio that would do mock ups of ads for them that they would present to their know. I was in advertising, and then I got into the newspaper in Athens doing ads. And then, I don't know, I think getting fired from there was the best thing that ever happened to me because it made me reassess my career and just able to take my artwork in a different direction. Something that really made me happy.

Yeah. Well, that's awesome. I guess even this was like a big question that I wanted to ask because I'm very curious. Well, for starters. So you do everything, like traditionally by hand, right?

I do. I've done a little 3d printing type stuff, but as far as modeling stuff in 3D, that just escapes me how people can do that. Yeah, I'm more nuts and bolts and clay and hands on. Even when I do illustrations, I end up hand drawing them first before scanning them in, working them on the computer. But, yeah, I don't mind the technology. I kind of really like it and I wish I knew more, but I just don't have time to learn it right now.

Yeah, that's what I was going to ask about, I guess, for context. Like, I'm an artist too.

Oh, good.

And I like to make things by hand. And there is that kind of 3d printing just in the past couple of years, has become so ubiquitous, and I personally see value in still making things by hand. But I'm just wondering how you feel about, like, I guess you kind of answered that already.

Well, 3d printing has its place, because if you're doing, say, a scale model of a dinosaur, you can get a file and print out a skeleton and then use that as your basis for your sculpture, which is something I would love to do. I don't have a printer myself. I'm sure they're becoming cheaper and cheaper. The first one we had at work, though, it was just way expensive, and to fix it would have cost more than the printer itself. Yeah, but there are places that if you have a file. I had a project I was working on where I had to have a model of an egg, the only dinosaur egg found this side of the Mississippi. But I had a scan of it, a file, and I was able to contact through etsy people that do printing. And you just send them the file and then they send you the printed piece. I know there's people locally that do it, but I'm not familiar with them. But there is a place for it in my world. Say I was going to do a big life size head of an allosaurus I could print the teeth out and then I'd have accurate teeth to go back into the skull like that.

Okay, well, that's a cool way to think of it. It's another tool.

It's a tool, but it's not the main thing. Not the main tool.

You keep talking about the dinosaurs that you make. So do you have, like, a quota? What is it that inspires? Why does a dinosaur need to be made?

That's a good question. Well, everything since those first dinosaurs, I made and presented to the museum people at Rock Eagle. Most everything I've built has not been for fun. It's been for commissions or for an exhibit type thing. Yeah, I don't have time for fun anymore.

Are you making dinosaurs, like, only for Fernbank, or are you, like.

No, I'm sorry. No. I do them for work, but I also do them for freelance as well. I get commissions from other museums, a lot of them out of state. The last big one I did is a life size skeleton, about 26ft long of a prehistoric whale that was here in Georgia. It was one of those just. It almost looks like a reptile. It's so foreign from our modern whales and it even had hind legs. But this is something I built for a museum in Albany, as a matter of fact. So some things are life size, some things are scale models. I've built scale models for other museums. A lot of people like smaller dinosaurs or animals because they can fit in their cases, but sometimes you get larger commissions. My very first one of any scale was a life sized Tyrannosaurus rex.

Oh, my gosh.

For a kid's mall in Michigan, some guy called me up. He had seen a little article a friend had written about me making smaller models, and he says, could you do a life size t rex? I said, sure. He says, well, great, we'll get started on it. I hung up the phone and I said, I have no idea how I'm going to do this. None whatsoever. I'm running around to my friends, how tall is 20ft? How long is 40ft? I was just. Oh, again, it's one of those things where you just kind of like, take what you know as far as uses of materials, incorporating them and kind of blending them together to make a new thing. Like, I had all these techniques and things for sculpture that I just applied and made them bigger to do a. Yeah, yeah. Now I do have a story about the t rex.

Okay.

This was way back several years ago. It was for a kids mall in Michigan. Unfortunately, the mall had to close a.

Lot of malls closing.

Yeah.

A lot of dinosaurs unhoused.

A lot of homeless dinosaurs in Michigan. The owner, the guy that had me build the dinosaur, called and said, how do we get this dinosaur apart? Because we're going to move it to California.

Okay.

And I said, well, first of all, it's not supposed to come apart, but if you cut it here, here, here, and here, take the pieces to California, I'll come back and reassemble it for you. Because I had to send it up in pieces and then assemble it on site because it was such a big project. Time goes by, and I didn't hear from him. And one day I ring him up, I go, what happened to your T Rex project? He said, oh, we cut the head and tail off and threw the rest away. No. So I picture in Michigan, some kids walking by a dumpster, and there's these t. Rex legs sticking out. It'd be kind of funny. But just to jump ahead to the good news, the head came back to Georgia, and now it's in a museum in Millageville at the Georgia college museum. And it's since been repainted and freshened up, so at least the head still remains.

The dinosaur lives on in some capacity.

That's right.

After taking a world tour.

California, San Diego, back to Georgia, all across.

I know that back in the day when malls were really big, I know, like, theming was a big deal. I'm sure that happened to a lot of big objects. Dinosaurs, novelty objects.

Well, like I said, this mall was kid oriented. A lot of stores catering to children. They wanted, naturally, dinosaurs in their atrium. So they had this trex, and it was being pestered by a flying reptile, and they had those lush greenery around. And the funniest thing is, I was up there for the opening ceremony of them all. And the band, 98 degrees was the opening band. Now, they've since disbanded stuff. But it was kind of funny, is even before they were famous. And now I'm going, what? Who are these people? Why am I supposed to know them? But now in my portfolio, I have a picture that the dinosaur with is banned in front of it.

Oh, that's sweet.

That's my claim to fame.

The dinosaurs claim to fame, too. Another question. It was like, really good. Now it's gone.

I'm sorry. I'm talking too much. You should talk.

Oh, I don't know what I should say.

What about your dinosaur models?

I don't have any dinosaurs.

Well, it's time to get started.

Oh, you're right. I always like the long neck. I like animals with long necks. I'm not really into giraffes, which is a shame, because they're still around.

Sure.

I do like the bronosaurus, something I'll never see.

Yeah. Well, thanks to paleo art, you can kind of get an idea what it looks like. Although our view of, like, dinosaurs from the early days, I mean, some of them are just. What were we thinking?

Yeah.

But I think as far as the sauropods, the long necks go, I think our view pretty much hasn't changed to that. Although at first, they were shown with their legs sprawling like a lizard. I can imagine their stomachs dragging the ground.

They don't really have toes, though, do they? Don't they just have, like, stumps?

Well, I have never seen any terrestrial animal that didn't have toes. They could be incredibly reduced, but everything seems to have toes. So a lot of reconstructions show them without toes at all. Like you said, it's just stumpy feet. But if you didn't have the toes to displace the weight, then those long foot bones which make up the foot, they would not be able to take the weight. They would crack, and you'd have all these crippled long necks walking around.

That's why they limping.

That's right. You'd lose the toes, you lose your life.

Yeah. Admittedly, my mental image of a brontosaurus is a cartoon, so that is helpful to know.

I think everything, though, even the big guys had toes, maybe tiny little toes, but still toes.

Yeah, that is true. That in all this time. I know our view of the Trex has changed a lot, even from the time I was a child to now. But the Brano, they haven't added feathers that I know of.

You know what? I know feathers are scientifically accurate, but I hate feathers on dinosaurs, mostly because I hate sculpting them. As a matter of fact, at work at the science center, we had a model from the 1964 World's Fair.

Oh, wow.

It wasn't the model, but they had a bunch of dinosaur models made for the world's fair so people could marvel at them. And the company that made them made copies and sold them to all over the place. So we have one that looks like an ostrich. It's got a struthiomymus. To update it. I gave it feathers. I sculpted these feathers like a vest that you just slip on as to not damage the historically inaccurate model.

Yeah, I was going to ask. You do have to go back to old models and make them more scientifically accurate.

Yeah, sometimes we do, but we also gave her a flock of babies, so she's got her brood at her feet trying to give, like, the whole bird dinosaur connection there.

Well, that's an interesting thing to think about, too, since you're doing exhibits over your career. Have the kinds of exhibits that they want you to make changed. Like, are you doing more natural scenes?

Mostly I just do the one element, the animal. There have been times that I've done whole environments. Matter of fact, the one I'm redoing now we have to change the landscape a little bit because it was all these palm trees and stuff you expect from, like, the flintstones, but it'd be more like conifers and pine trees. So those trees have to change. And we have a long neck dinosaur that wasn't even around. So he's got to go. No, your long neck. Your long neck. We've got to get rid of him. I don't know what we're going to do with it.

Send him to my house.

Okay.

How big is he?

The neck is maybe about 12ft long. It was depicted submerged in water.

Okay.

Kind of floating with the neck. So it's just a neck and shoulders.

I can fit that out my window.

That would be fine. I think it'd be a lovely addition here at the history center.

Yeah, it's like world history.

It's like the old history of exhibits.

Yeah, we could just have, like, next to the cabin, we just have a dinosaur.

Just have it pop out every once in a while.

Have you ever had to add, like, animatronic elements that might be, like, next level?

No, I'm kind of a still person. I don't mind fleshed out models. They're doing something like running or jumping or attacking somebody else. But when you see, like, a skeleton that's in an action pose, there's so much involved with that. Like there are cartilage pads between the vertebrae and you've got cartilage between joints and stuff. So when they got them posed like that, you go, oh, I don't know. Could they really do that? Okay, so I prefer my skeletons just standing there behaving themselves. But I don't know. Everybody seems to like the action poses.

Yeah, for sure. Because even, like the Trex, he used to just stand way back and Trex is, like, moving. Yeah. That's why I was wondering if, as that seems to have become more popular, if they're like, we need a scene.

From you, we'll see. No animatronics.

I do remember the question I was going to ask you before, and it wasn't really a question. It was kind of dumb because you were talking about the different kinds of commissions that you do.

Sure.

And I was wondering if somewhere there's, like, a billionaire who just has a bunch of dinosaur skeletons that you've made.

No, but if you hear of anybody, please send them my way. I see these things online, these interviews with, like you said, rich people who buy skeletons and they have them in their house like an exhibit, but nobody sees them. I think it's just the joy of having it or saying, oh, I've got this rare skeleton, and you hear about, like, fossils belonging to everybody. But if it's private land, then the owner of the land can do whatever they want with the skeletons.

Oh, that's true.

To a billionaire or whomever. Yeah. I've done commission pieces, mostly for museums, but very few private collectors.

I'll just have to reach out to the billionaires.

I know all your beard and their friends just send out a mass email.

Yeah, I'm very interested in, I don't know, people who have weird hobbies, and I'm, like, someone somewhere, I'm sure, has their own private dinosaur museum.

Oh, I wouldn't doubt it.

I feel like there's so much I could ask you about dinosaurs, but I don't know. I wouldn't say my dinosaur. Maybe my dinosaur fever did subside because I was really into them as a kid. And then I think I just latched onto the brontosaurus, which is now a cartoon in my mind, and that's kind of where it ended.

Well, Brontosaurus is one of those animals that just growing up, that's all you hear, is Brontosaurus, Brontosaurus. And then they said, well, there is no brontosaurus. It's really called a patosaurus.

I remember, yeah, it's like Pluto. They took that from us.

Well, get this, though. They said, no, Brontosaurus is its own animal. And so now it's back. We have both brontosaurus and a patosaurus.

What's the difference?

It was something to do with the skull.

Is it like the bump on the head?

Brontosaurus, you know, kind of has that squared off face. But they had found a dinosaur ahead of that and named it a patosaurus. And it had more of a pointy snout I could get into, like the diplodocus type things, but no. Anyway, one was kind of pointy, and then our Brontosaurus had kind of a blunt head. They thought, oh, no, we just put the wrong head on the wrong dinosaur. But turns out that Bronosaurus is his own thing.

Okay, so it's not like the apatosaurus was a one off. Like an exceptionally beautiful Bronosaurus. It was its own thing.

No. And you know what? As far as, like, right now, they found a new. Or they've described a new species of Tyrannosaurus. Oh, yeah, I can't remember the last name. Tyrannosaurus, blah, blah, blah, whatever the species name is. And then these people go, well, no, it's not a new species. It's really this and black and it's just back and forth and stuff with all these paleontologists and people like me who are armchair paleontologists. But I think a lot of species are the same thing. But we don't take into account individuality, because if you were to take a lot of the same animal and put it together, you would find differences.

Yeah, we don't have them alive, so we can't really.

That's right. I think there's only really five dinosaurs, but because of individual characteristics, we have all these species.

It's just the same five dinosaurs.

You know what? They're all really just brontosaurus.

That's it. There's just swimming bronsours. There's the flying bronnosaurus and the brontosaurus.

With plates on its back, bikes on its tail.

That's it. Some of them eat meat, some of them don't.

Everything's bronto.

I like that. That's my feet. That's my truth. And I'm so sorry. I'm just commandeering this conversation with the bronze.

Listen, go with what you know.

That's all I know. And it makes me sad, because since they're so noble and graceful, they always kill them off in movies.

That's right. Well, they can't bite you.

Yeah. Well, we want to show something bad's happening with dinosaurs. We want to show, like, a dinosaur going crazy. We want to show the dinosaur island exploding.

Oh, yeah.

What are we going to show first? A dying bronzaurus.

That's right. Because everybody loves them, and they really empathize with what they're going through.

So for our listeners, if anyone wants to know more about you or your field or see more of your work, how can they do that?

They can go to ww dot rickspearsart.com. It's the same as my email at gmail rickspearsart@gmail.com. I had to add art because, believe it or not, Rick Spears.com was already taken.

No.

Yes. There is a comic book artist oh, a writer. I think he's a writer of comic books, but his name is Rick Spears, so he's famous in that realm. And he already grabbed the Internet addresses. Love talking about stuff. Love answering questions. I'm also involved with the paleontology association of Georgia, or Pag. We're a statewide fossil club. Basically professional paleontologists. We have amateur paleontologists. We have people that just like paleontology and fossils. Have meetings quarterly and then a cool website, which is paleontologyassociationofgeorgia.com, I think, actually. And there's a Facebook page. Yeah. We welcome all interested parties.

That's cool.

Georgia doesn't have much as far as dinosaurs go. Everything seems to be over there near Columbus.

Oh.

If you picture Columbus, Georgia, and then work your way out into Alabama, it's almost like it spreads out. So believe it or not, chock full of dinosaurs. But we get the very end of them, the very tip of it. But we also have a lot of fossil resources that aren't dinosaurs everywhere, from, like, the early, ancient seas up into mammoth semastodons from just about 10,000 years ago.

Oh, that's so cool.

Yeah. They're recent puppies.

There are things other than dinosaurs.

Yeah. Believe it or not, I do more than dinosaurs, but that's the coolest thing.

Okay. And that's cool to learn, too. There's like a dinosaur belt that stretches through Alabama.

That's right. Now we have the rocks for dinosaurs, but there's no dinosaurs in those rocks.

Wow. Maybe they took. Maybe they took our dinosaurs.

Alabama, we will have our revenge.

All right, well, I think with that, we'll go ahead and end it. Thank you so much.

Oh, thank you, Sophie. I appreciate your time.

Thanks again for listening to thanks again for coming. And thanks again to everyone for listening to our podcast.

Rar.

Oh. Then again, is a production of the Northeast Georgia History center in Gainesville, Georgia. Our podcast is edited by Andrews Giles. Our digital and on site programs are made possible by the Ada May ioster Education center. Please join us next week for another episode. Then again, close.