Kenton Pies, the artist who created both the original 50-foot dragon sculpture in Deane’s Park in 1966 and its replacement in 2013, will return to Mercer Island for Summer Celebration to sell his art, including paintings, sculptures and books.

His recently released volumes of “Kenton’s Art,” or “Innovative Creations: 63 years of art in stone * concrete * metal * paint,” contain more than 600 photographs of his work.

Pies, who started his artistic career as a sign maker in a small town in Wisconsin, is now 84 and lives in Montana. Though he had many other art pieces around the Eastside, including the old totem pole at Totem Lake shopping mall, graphics in the Red Lion hotels and signs at the Salish Lodge, the dragon is a significant part of his legacy, he said. Still, he had no idea how popular and iconic the sculpture would become.

“I had a reputation for doing and creating things,” he said. “But I didn’t know it would be so well received.”

The dragon has been such an attraction for Islanders that Deane’s Children’s Park has long been dubbed “Dragon Park.” During a playground renovation in 2005, a castle themed playground was put in to honor the dragon.

“Most of the people in City Hall played on my dragon as a kid,” Pies said.

The original dragon sculpture had experienced a lot of wear and tear over 50 years, so the Mercer Island Parks andRecreation Department tracked down the original designer to ask about fixing it. Due to costly repair estimates, it was decided to build an entirely new and improved dragon.

Pies built the second sculpture in Montana, and transported it to Mercer Island in four sections. The original was built in the park, as Pies used chicken wire to create the dragon shape and mixed the concrete on site.

“The first one, I made without really knowing what I was doing,” he said. “But I had always been enterprising … I learned all that stuff by doing.”

The new sculpture “will last a couple hundred years” and entertain “new generations of children,” according to the Mercer Island Arts Council’s STQRY website.

“But I don’t plan on building the next one,” Pies said.

His sculpting techniques have evolved over time, and he has also experimented with many different artistic mediums. He has paired “artistic flair with practical skills in disciplines ranging from woodworking and masonry to architectural design” over his career, according to his book.

Pies returned to Mercer Island in November 2013 for a ribbon cutting ceremony for the new dragon.

For more, see www.discovery.stqry.com and www.kentonsart.com.

Below, a photo from a historic Sunset Magazine Article from 1966 of Kenton’s Dragon.