OBERLIN — Santa is in an iron lung sleigh, a snowman named Norman is torching foreclosed homes and gingerbread actors are recreating the Nov. 24, 1963, killing of Lee Harvey Oswald by nightclub owner Jack Ruby.

It’s starting to look a lot like Christmas in Oberlin.

This town, known for cutting-edge music, lifestyles and art, is home to the three newest holiday displays by Wellington conceptual artist Keith McGuckin.

People giggled, rolled their eyes and even admired the displays featured in the windows of two downtown businesses, the Sperry-Gorske Agency, 21 S. Main St., and Infinite Monkey Comics and Games, 27 S. Main St.

“I think it’s awesome,” Shelly Niles said of “The Amazing Iron Lung Santa.”

“He put a lot of work into it — there’s a lot of detail,” Niles said.

But another passerby, a middle-aged Oberlin woman, simply laughed herself silly and moved on.

It’s been four years since McGuckin’s Nazi gingerbread men put him on the map — and got him kicked out of another storefront — and he’s still going strong.

Clenching an unlit pipe between his teeth, McGuckin joked he’s trying for the Norman Rockwell effect.

He insisted that his Santa in the iron lung, which helped those suffering from polio to breathe in the 1950s, is truly inspirational.

“This is a Santa who, even though he has polio and is in an iron lung, is going to go out and do his job,” McGuckin said.

In another display, a merry fire fed by a Christmas tree burns near a crazed snowman named Norman who is setting fires in foreclosed homes.

McGuckin’s 2009 pieces:

Purchase a print.

In a video on YouTube, Norman’s wife smells the gasoline and burned creosote and tells Norman, “You smell like you’ve been spooning under a Dodge with some sultry, chain-smoking grease monkey.”

His third display inside an old television set features The Men of Gingerbread Players, a cookie acting troupe replaying the assassination of Oswald, who killed President John F. Kennedy.

A child of the 1950s and 1960s, McGuckin said he is a big fan of earlier holiday displays.

“There was a lot of drinking in my family, so I get a lot of my ideas after two or three cold ones,” he said.

Last year, McGuckin’s holiday display featuring a legless Santa being pushed down some stairs by a homicidal Christmas tree was removed from the Oberlin Public Library after complaints. The controversy landed him a spot on radio’s “The Jay Thomas Show.”

This year he’s aiming for a television venue, saying he thinks his art should be considered for “The Colbert Report.”

McGuckin’s past displays have featured the likes of a snowwoman who turns her husbands into snow cones, a crystal meth Christmas and a drug-smuggling elf who gets hit with a Taser by police when they mistake his candy cane for a switchblade.

John Gorske, one of the owners of the Sperry-Gorske agency, said McGuckin’s displays have become a holiday staple, and the insurance company decided to give him a venue.

“It’s Oberlin being Oberlin,” he said with a laugh.

But McGuckin said someone at the agency did ask him to remove one part of the display — a saying in a balloon above the head of a young girl helping Santa to sip a drink.

Why?

McGuckin assumes it’s because of the girl’s dialogue: “This is such a sweet sleigh, it makes me wish I had polio, too.”

Contact Cindy Leise at 329-7245 or cleise@chroniclet.com.

Keith McGuckin and some of his past work:

Purchase a print.

---

Print this story
Report an inappropriate comment

---

In order to comment, you must agree to our user agreement and discussion guidelines.

Need help? Email Us.

---