Log Home Living
Sculpting a Studio
Wildlife artist’s work is framed by logs
Buddy Obara sculpts wildlife figures in clay, which are then cast in bronze.
Story by Linda Vaccariello ■ Photography by Joel Zarska
 Above: a log studio and guest quarters accommodate both Buddy's work and his visiting clients. Below: The kitchen cabinets are faced with split logs and accented with hardware Buddy handcrafted.  |
Below: The home’s fireplace contains bits of rocks and relics that Buddy collected over the years.  |
 Above: Buddy Obara's pieces, prized by collectors, are inspired by his travels around the world as a sportsman. |
Some people keep scrapbooks of their travels. Pages filled with photos, ticket stubs, postcards and railway passes are the tangible reminders of breathtaking sights and exotic adventures.
A.J. “Buddy” Obara has a fireplace instead. Buddy is one of the nation's foremost wildlife sculptors, an artist and a sportsman whose work has taken him all over the globe. On these travels he has collected souvenirs with substance—Fascinating fossils, flinty arrowheads, glittering clumps of fool's gold. But you can't press a tralobite between the pages of a scrapbook, and so Buddy has displayed his mementos in a different way. They're incorporated into the masonry of a fireplace.
Rising 30 feet high at one end of the great room of his guest lodge, the native stone fireplace is chockfull of these bits and pieces of Buddy’s life—each one with a stary to be shared. It's a fitting focal point for a log home that is full of surprises.
Buddy and his wife moved to Unionville, Pennsylvania 25 years ago, looking for privacy and a home surrounded by nature. They bought a stone structure that dated back to 1796 and painstakingly restored it, turning it into an elegant home.
But Buddy also needed a studio and wanted someplace to accommodate guests—often clients who came to consult with him on projects. So, 10 years ago, he added a log lodge to his property, creating a spot that is both a place for him to work and a showcase for his art.
He chose to build in log because of the kind of art he creates—stunning, realistic bronze pieces that capture the grace and dignity of a hawk in fight, a dolphin leaping, bear cubs tussling on the forest floor. It seemed to him that logs would be the perfect frame for his art. “A log house brings the outdoors in,” he says. “Galleries are fine, but when you see something in a setting where you can relate to it, it makes all the difference in the world,”
And, too, log seems the natural choice for this place thar Buddy calls Laurel Lodge, which claims a spot of beautiful property on the edge of Brandywine River. It sits apart from the main house, perched 30 feet above the Brandywine in a stand of hemlock and rhododendron. Laurel Lodge has a tranquil, secluded location that appeals to the Obaras and their guests. "My clients want to come in quietly and privately,” he says.
Considering who his clients are, it's no wonder they value their privacy. Buddy has created pieces for Michael Jackson, Jacques Cousteau, King Fahd of Saudi Arabia and President Bush, to name a few. Hockey great Bobbie Orr has a Buddy Obara original; so does General Nomman Schwartzkopf and dozens of CEOs, heads of state and other collectors. Those who visit the artist on his home turf enter a unique world.
Buddy drafted the guest lodge and studio on a cocktail napkin before turning it over to an architect. The focus is the main room, anchored by the massive fireplace. This big space is made for entertaining—"That's where all the partying happens,” he allows—but it's also filled with furniture to create comfortable, intimate areas where Buddy can talk with clients about projects and where guests can relax and study the art and artifacts that fill every corner. Buddy has collected, among other things, an impressive array of Native American items, including peace pipes, totems, ceremonial garments and drums. Much of the furniture is handmade, mimicking the ranch house style of the Old West.
The small kitchen is captivating—sort of a whimsical fantasy of a bunkhouse larder. Split-log cabinets continue the lodge motif and rosehead nails accent the edge of counters. An old cook stove and icebox add to the impression of roughing it, while beautifully crafted bronze arrowheads and trout figures (Buddy’s handiwork, of course) serve as hardware accents. There's an elegantly rustic bathroom complete with a clawfoot tub. A bedroom is tucked into the loft, where guests can nestle down in a trundle bed made of lodgepole pine, drifting off under Hudson Bay blankets.
Buddy uses the lodge studio for sculpting clay models, the early versions of what will eventually become his finished pieces. “I spend a lot of time hunting and fishing all over the world, and when I see something interesting, I do field sketches," he explains. “Then I come home and spend time studying animal figures and anatomy before I start a small clay model.” The final pieces are cast at a foundry in Baltimore. A large, complicated project—such as the pack of running wolves just completed for Garden of the Gods in Colorado— may take a year to finish.
He worked just as methodically to build Laurel Lodge. The logs used were standing-dead lodgepole pine taken from Glacier National Park. The home was built by local Amish craftsmen. Buddy served as his own general contractor. “It took a year to complete,” he recalls. His biggest concern was making the lodge look old and as welcoming as a worn moccasin. That meant paying special attention to details such as the molding and trim. “There's a lot of detail,” he says. “It's the minute detail that forms the picture.”
And the details are not lost on his guests. Many of them are sportsmen who have been 1o the world's finest resorts. But nothing quite prepares them for what they find at Laurel Lodge. “Generally, when they come in the first time, they just drop their jaws and stand staring,” he says. “I had one man say that he could take the whole place and not do anything except change the art,” Buddy recalls. “Then later he decided that he wouldn't even change that.”
NOTEBOOK
| Log package price: $26,000 Square footage: 3,000 (including garage) Log producer: Rustics of Montana General contractor: Reuben Esch Kitchen table: New West Designs Windows and doors: Andersen Windows For contact information, see Resources. |  Loft Floorplan |
| “A log house brings the outdoors in.” —Buddy Obara, homeowner |  First Floorplan |
Below: From animal mounts to cowboy hats to Native American artifacts, the home is a grand display case for Buddy’s collections |  Basement Floorplan |
Log Home Living | September, 1999 |