wpengine I misjudged Melody Peña, the modest artist and sculptor who is the creative heart of Windstone Editions. I assumed that anyone who sculpts fantasy figurines would somehow view the real world through that fanciful gauze. Just as some members of the Society of Creative Anachronism bend their lives around the Medieval persona they portray at … Read more
Having arrived at the blue metal building that is Windstone’s new home in the Northwest, I opened the door and stepped into a small foyer with a service window into the office. Windstone brochures were perched in a stand on the window counter. On the floor below the shelf an amazingly lifelike lizard sat sculpted … Read more
On my first tour of Windstone Edition’s new Northwest production facility, John Alberti (the mechanical wizard behind Melody Pena’s superb figurines) led me up a flight of carpeted stairs, where a stack of Harry Potter books had come to rest permanently on the third step, to the large room that serves as the design studio … Read more
I have described Melody Peña, the artistic creator of all things Windstone, as a naturalist to the imaginary world. But she does amazingly well in the real world too. Proof of this came to me in the rotund form of a guinea pig. I took my 11-year-old daughter, Tam, on a cross-town pilgrimage to Windstone … Read more
Pendragon writes… Blogging about fantasy figurines is an unusual business. I suppose that shouldn’t come as a surprise. In journalism school, they didn’t offer tips for covering the dragon-griffin-gargoyle beat. The biggest surprise about this fantasy endeavor is how un-fanciful Melody Peña and John Alberti are. Melody is as much a naturalist as she is … Read more
Pendragon writes… Mix up a few facts, and you end up with a fantasy. Mix up a few animal parts – as Melody frequently does – and you end up with fantasy figurines. Of course, Melody is not the first to mix and match heads and wings and beaks and claws. The practice is ancient … Read more
Anxious to see what Windstone Editions was all about, I drove south of Corvallis a mile, then turned right at Murphy’s Tavern onto Wake Robin Ave., a long, straight, dead-end that I had never explored in my 15 years in Corvallis. I passed humble houses and an apartment complex on the right, cows and a … Read more
An artist or writer should feel proud to sign their name to their work. Yet when I signed my name at the close of my first few Windstone postings, it seems somehow ill suited to the topic of dragons, unicorns and fanciful creatures. For the first time in my life, I find myself wanting a … Read more
I returned John Alberti’s call, and we had a marvelous, wide-ranging conversation. He explained that Windstone Editions is America’s premier makers of collectible “fantasy figurines” – dragons, griffins, unicorns, winged cats, flying horses and an entire menagerie of mythological creatures I had never heard of – like a kirin, an oriental unicorn. “Collectors refer to … Read more
Windstone Editions entered my consciousness on the third Thursday of the month late in 2008. Just after 4 p.m., the house phone rang. Most business calls come in on the cell phone, so I let the call ring through to voice mail. When I picked up the message, I discovered I had missed a business … Read more
