In an age when swimming pools and backyard living spaces can be rendered in stunning 3-D detail and brought to vivid virtual life through a VR headset, Allan Curtis is something of a Luddite.
“I was the first guy in Michigan to have 2- and 3-D design software when it came out. I used it for a year or two and realized, I don’t like this at all,” said Curtis, a builder and designer at Legendary Escapes, serving the greater Detroit area.
That’s partly because the firm specializes in elaborately themed poolscapes that can’t be conceived on a computer screen. Curtis has yet to find software that will allow him to, say, plunk a pirate ship beside a pool, or replicate an old knotted tree for a rope swing at the deep end. Design programs, he said, only cramp his creativity. Additionally, Curtis believes miniature sculptures serve his clients better than whiz-bang digital drawings.
“When you’re standing there with an object in front of you, it allows me to convey more of the idea of what I’m doing,” he said.
Sculpting became an integral part of his design process about 10 years ago, when Legendary Escapes began making a name for itself as a vinyl pool installer with a penchant for extravagant shotcrete features: Custom rock formations, grottos, sun shelves … you name it.
He begins with a chunk of polymer clay, which is molded, painted, baked and adorned with trees, shrubs and tiny people in swimsuits. The process takes three to four hours.
The details play an important role. “It gives the customer context to scale,” Curtis said. “Those little people give [clients] a general sense of how tall a wall is going to be, how tall a waterfall is going to be, how long the pool is, because they transpose themselves into that little character.”
Sometimes those clay characters even look like his clients. A customer with a Mohawk, for example, got his own miniature version, complete with the distinct hairdo.
