Prince charming, gargoyles, cowboys
come to life in local artist’s hands
Rockbridge County’s only enchanted castle is in ruins. Weeds coil up the walls that used to contain magical creatures, dark mazes, superheroes and aliens. Now the fiberglass fantasy world that once sparked countless imaginations is gone.
But behind the faded shells of giant ants and monsters in a pair of austere metal warehouses, the magic is still happening.
Mark Cline, owner of the Enchanted Castle Studio, steps out of his office in the larger of the two buildings and walks toward his workshop in the other. He picks up a human head and turns it carefully in his hands.
“I started him a few hours ago—he’s Prince Charming,” Cline says with a grin. The clay and Styrofoam head smiles back.
Cline might be the closest thing to a modern day Dr. Frankenstein, but instead of real body parts he uses fiberglass, glue, chicken wire, wood and clay to fashion various animals, monsters and storybook characters for customers around the world. Cline also runs the Haunted Monster Museum and Dark Maze in Natural Bridge and Haunting Tales, a ghost tour in Lexington.
As Cline describes himself, “I’m more of an entertainer who knows how to do artwork.” Cline is also a showman, a cross between P.T. Barnum and David Copperfield, who uses his creations to entertain and amuse visitors. He believes that his work can heal people by making them laugh.
“The most important thing is how many smiles it puts on people’s faces,” he said.
But that message apparently had not gotten through to everyone. In 2001, someone set fire to the Enchanted Castle and left a letter saying that Cline was doing the devil’s work.
As Cline watched his life’s work burn to the ground, his only thought was how to rebuild it.
At his derelict castle on Route 11, Cline takes Prince Charming’s head into his workshop. An assistant is finishing a pair of hands that Cline modeled on his daughter. Cline explains that Prince Charming is one-third the size of a real person, so everything has to be smaller.
The headless, handless body stands up in a pair of cowboy boots in the middle of the workshop. Nearby are two life-size elephants, two gargoyles, two lion heads and several huge snowmen, all of which are in some stage of construction.
Just as Cline is explaining that he modeled Prince Charming’s head after the late actor Christopher Reeve, who once played Superman, a jet roars overhead. “Timing is everything in this business,” he jokes.
Prince Charming is one of a cast of fairy tale characters that Cline is rebuilding for the Enchanted Forest park in Ellicott City, Md. Cline remembers playing in the park when he was a boy, long before the Three Little Pigs or the Merry Miller fell apart from neglect.
“I grew up believing that this was reality, and I was going to be a part of this lifestyle,” Cline said. Now he is rebuilding the memories that inspired him to become a sculptor.
Behind the scenes, Cline is a businessman who takes his craft seriously and sells his creations to customers around the world. Some of his creations end up in Rockbridge County, such as the cowboy riding a velociraptor in front of the Natural Bridge Museum or the recreation of Stonehenge, called “Foam Henge,” on Route 11, which recently blew over in high winds. Two weeks ago, he sent a gargoyle to Austria.
Cline hopes to share his knowledge with aspiring sculptors by building a school on the grounds of the Enchanted Castle. He plans to construct a second large workshop in which to give six-week courses on fiberglass sculpting and molding.
For the time being, Cline will keep building his wacky sculptures, giving ghost tours and doing the occasional magic show. Outside his office among the ruins of his castle, Cline points to the setting sun and asks, “Who says you can’t live happily ever after?”
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(NAME HERE / Rockbridge Report)
Produced by
Washington and Lee
journalism students.
Lead Supervisors:
Prof. Brian
Richardson
Prof. Phylissa
Mitchell
Editing supervisor:
Prof. Pamela Lucke
Technical supervisor: Michael Todd