I first discovered the fantastical menagerie of Joe Treat the way a lot of Skagitonians have. I was walking past the Anacortes Depot Arts Center when I encountered an adult and baby giraffe reaching up towards some trees, no doubt in search of a snack. Although I’d seen my share of driftwood sculptures in venues as varied as flea markets and art galleries, I had never come across anything quite like this in scale or artistry. I had a feeling at the time that these wooden sculptures were probably not unique to the artist credited with their creation, and it made me want to know more about Joe Treat.

Joe Treat, as it turns out, lives in Bow. If you drive past his home on Worline Road (and he would be delighted if you do), you won’t need an address to know you’ve arrived. The Loch Ness Monster might well be your first clue, but you’ll find it a challenge to focus only on this behemoth for all the other creatures you’ll immediately discover. 

Joe’s home and property are the outdoor gallery for a vast array of in some cases larger than life creatures, all created from pieces of driftwood. You’ll see monkeys, rhinos, giant spiders, unicorns, horses, and elephants. And be forewarned: there be zombies, matey. 

At one point in his life, Joe was an insurance agent, according to a 2017 article in the local magazine, Bellingham Alive! Although interested in carpentry, Joe found its required precision (coloring within the lines, so to speak) too confining for his more artistic sensibility. “I wasn’t a perfectionist” he was quoted as saying in the article. Of course, who needs perfection when you can have art?

On a fateful trip to Thailand a few years ago, Joe visited a town of woodworkers who made sculptures out of locally found root that bore a resemblance to driftwood. Joe knew where he could find plenty of the latter — and he’s been combing the beaches of western Washington ever since, with some help from Google Maps. His discoveries are added to the “boneyard” outside his work shed to perhaps take on some new manifestation of Joe’s vivid imagination. 

“(I) feel like an archeologist,” Joe said in the Bellingham Alive! story. “Sometimes I’m looking for body parts and sometimes I’m looking for something to be inspired with.”

Joe begins his sculptures with a threaded rod that serves as a core to which appendages and special characteristics are screwed on. He has a particular fondness for curved pieces of driftwood, which convey a dimensionality to his sculptures that would be harder to achieve with only angular pieces. Although the eye is immediately drawn to the scale of his creations, it’s the finishing touches that add a sense of whimsy — particularly in the case of eyes, where drawer pulls, golf balls, light bulbs, dog toys, and even the rubber bottoms from walking canes are all fair game as long they help bring bring the sculptures to more vibrant life. 

While the vagaries of weather in the Magic Skagit might be hostile to many outdoor art displays, the elements actually add to the organic “realism” of Joe’s creatures — even if they were straight out of the realm of fantasy to begin with.

At this point in his late-blooming artistic career, Joe seems more intent on scratching his creative itch rather than making a buck. While his art does have buyers, the one time insurance agent confided in the Bellingham Alive! story that, “I’m having the time of my life…I’m not really doing it to sell. My greatest joy is watching people drive by, and screech on their brakes and back up. It’s almost impossible to drive by without smiling.” Then there’s the case of my 5-year old grandson, whom we took to Joe’s Worline Road home to view the sculptures, and who refused to get out of the car out of sheer terror. It might have had something with the enormous driftwood spider clinging to Joe’s home. Not everyone appreciates great art.