Patrick Amiot’s first sculpture on Florence Avenue in Sebastopol, a 14-foot fisherman made of recycled parts, was installed in June 2001. It was meant as a goodbye.
He was broke, his career was at a crossroads, and the artist planned to pack up his young family and open a pizzeria in Costa Rica. The looming, joyful artwork erected at his home was a thank you to his adopted town.
“I was expecting a city ordinance to tell me to get my s— off the front yard,” Amiot remembers. Instead, it drew the interest of a local newspaper. “They asked the neighbors, ‘What do you think about this? ’ And the neighbors said, ‘It would be nice if he did something else.’”
The end became the beginning for Amiot, ringmaster of one of the most charming traditions in Bay Area art and community. The sculptor and his wife Brigitte Laurent have since collaborated on more than 30 works of whimsy on their street — including baseball players, batmen, a wicked witch, a rampaging Godzilla and houses strutting on chicken feet — which adorn almost every Florence Avenue home for a three-block stretch…