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It started about 12 years ago, when our best friends were having trouble getting pregnant.  They were young and healthy, but no matter what they did they couldn’t conceive.  Steve (http://fabulousfurnitureon28.com) felt really bad, so he made them an African looking metal sculpture, about 12 inches high.  It was clearly a woman, with a protruding belly.  He sent it out to them and told them to put it in their bedroom

Their daughter Bea was born less than one year later.

Then this @Academy Award winner actress came into Fabulous Furniture and bought a table.  While she was there she mentioned that she had been trying to get pregnant, but was about to stop trying because she was 46.  Steve showed her a small fertility goddess that he had made after the success of Bea.  She bought it and 6 months later called to say she was pregnant, and that if it was a boy, she was naming it Steve.  Her daughter Stephanie is adorable.

Of course this sent Steve into hyper-drive.  He made all kinds of fertility totems.  He sold 10 more, and 10 more babies were born.  He started hanging a little tag on them with one word:  GUARANTEED! I made him take those tags off--- it seemed a little dangerous.  Although the power of the totems was hard to deny. 

About 6 months ago a woman came in to Fabulous Furniture and said she wanted to buy one of the totems for her sister.  Steve was hesitant, and told her that the way it worked was that you had to buy it for yourself.  The woman said her sister really wanted a baby.  She pointed to her own two little boys and said that the sister wanted to give them a cousin so they wouldn’t be too far apart in age.  Steve tried to convince her to send the sister in.  The woman insisted.  Steve relented, wrapped the totem, and  wished her luck.

The woman called today.  No, she admitted, her sister still hadn’t gotten pregnant.  But she had!

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Steve Heller's The General

The thing I most love about my honey, Steve Heller (http://fabulousfurnitureon28.com ), is that he is absolutely sure of what he likes and what works.  There’s no waffling in his world.  Once he spent over a week constructing a dinosaur-head made from found metal.  One day he stood back, looked at it for a long time, and decided that the wrench that was the supporting piece for the neck didn’t work.  “Soup,” he told me when I tried to talk him out of taking that dinosaur apart.

“Soup” is the worst thing Steve can say about art, especially his own.  We learned that from Lily Tomlin.  In her brilliant one woman show, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, Tomlin pointed to a huge picture of a Campbell’s soup can.  “Soup” she said.  Then she showed us Andy Warhol’s iconic painting of the same can.  “Art.” Long pause.  Soup. Art. Soup. Art.  Tomlin’s head spun from left to right, like the little girl in The Exorcist.  Soup.  Art. 

Needless to say, that dinosaur’s head was in pieces in 2 hours flat!

Steve doesn’t live in the world of “good enough.”  He hates that kind of thinking.  When people at breakfast wish him an innocuous, “Don’t work too hard,” he absolutely bristles.  “Why not work as hard as possible?” he’ll ask.  They are never sure exactly how to respond. 

Because he can only work on his metal sculptures outside in the spring, summer, and fall, this long cold winter was really hard on him.  He decided he was going to make a robot, which he could work on in the shop.  He had been thinking about robots for years, but hadn’t found the inspiration.  This time he dug some pieces out from the snow, pieces he’s been collecting for decades.  They included a taillight from a 1919 car, a floor waxer, and chrome motorcycle shock absorbers. His first robot, the General, was fabulous.  In real Steve Heller fashion--- OCD meets ADD--- he started making 6 more.  Now he has a battalion of robots, each more gorgeous and clever than the next.