BUTLER, Wis. (WFRV) – Things have a way of just falling –or fitting– into place for Ike Wynter.
“Honestly it was just the opportunity to repurpose wood from the side of the road,” Wynter said. “That’s what drove the curiosity to do this. It wasn’t to sell art, it was mainly just a hobby.”
What if severe weather threatens NFL Draft? Packers, NFL detail contingency plan
The artist’s busy studio in the village of Butler is now home to 32 NFL logos, after 40 days and 500 hours of work, all set to be displayed at the NFL Draft in Green Bay.
“The [NFL] said they found my work online and said it might be a good fit for the draft this year for a project they have in mind,” Wynter said. “So all these pieces of art will line the player walkway as the players get drafted.”
Wynter’s art will be on display, on an international level, one thing that’s hard even for an artist to imagine.
“It hasn’t really hit me yet, and I don’t really want to think about it until it happens,” he said. “I very much live in the moment.”
There’s the saying that one person’s trash is another’s treasure, but for Wynter, it was therapy, too.
“I was going through some stuff and stress and mental challenges, so I just told myself if I can sit in a studio and listen to music all day and cut wood, that’s a pretty good therapeutic career for me,” Wynter said.
Eight years later, it would seem like a stressful responsibility to most, but to a master craftsman like Wynter, it’s a process as smooth as sanded wood.
“I don’t have a single paint brush up here or a bucket of stain,” he said. “So we just had to get creative with the furniture I picked up and then adapting it.”
Wynter enjoyed the challenge the most complicated logos of the Jaguars and Buccaneers brought to his cutting board, but it was really the one from Buffalo that touched him most.
“My grandfather played for the Buffalo Bills, he got drafted by the Buffalo Bills in 1944,” he said.
His grandfather, Raymond Kuffel, passed before he was born, but Wynter still can feel rooted to him through wood.
“Somehow through my career of picking up wood on the side of the road, and turning it into art, we’re both tied into something together we both get to experience, 81 years apart,” Wynter said. “Who would’ve thought?”
‘Busiest week in 20 years’: Airports make final preparations for tens of thousands of draft visitors
It’s long odds, but the NFL has branched across generations, just like each of the 32 puzzles has that perfect way of fitting together.
“I researched a ton about him through this process. He was somebody I never got to meet,” Wynter said. “So now to be the grandson of him and do something that was a part of his life, and now 81 years later bring a piece of art that is part of his legacy is really cool.”
