MARYSVILLE — These days, Michel Combis needs his reading glasses to follow his passion, crafting miniature houses from toothpicks.
He leans over the kitchen table in his north Marysville home, carefully applying glue to each small stick before attaching them to his current project.
In a news story written 28 years ago for The Herald, columnist and reporter Jim Casey praised Combis, then a young man, for his talent building delicate and detailed toothpick houses against backdrops of driftwood.
“If the word ‘toothpicks’ makes it sound kitschy, it’s not,” Casey wrote about the art work.
Combis, now 53, is employed in the construction industry. He builds decks, does framing and nails siding on new houses.
“But the economy is bad and the housing market is real slow,” Combis said. “So I thought it was a good time to get back into building with toothpicks.”
Combis was 8 years old in his native Hawaii when he started using toothpicks to make miniature lifeguard towers like the one on the beach near his family’s house.
“I come from a poor family of seven kids and toothpicks were the cheapest art supply I could get my hands on,” Combis said. “I consider myself a Northwest artist now, but often my houses look like the places on Oahu where I grew up. No electricity, no running water, no chimneys.”
After moving to Snohomish County in 1975, Combis graduated to making toothpick ships in bottles, and his miniatures on driftwood won numerous prizes at the Evergreen State Fair in Monroe.
His tools are boxes of round and flat toothpicks, toenail clippers, masking tape and a bottle of good old Elmer’s glue.
“The only amount of money into this is my time,” Combis said. “It’s so cool because it’s so inexpensive.”
His current project is a scene of beach houses hugging a cliff made from a 21-inch piece of alder. Mushrooms that Combis gathers along the upper Stillaguamish River form the roofs of the houses. The creation, using nearly 1,500 toothpicks put together in about 150 hours, includes a steep seven-flight staircase.
“You couldn’t have a bad heart to climb that,” Combis said.
The miniatures on the log soon are to be enclosed in glass and used to make the base of a table lamp, Combis said. He is hoping that Cascade Valley Hospital in Arlington will accept his proposal to put the lamp in the hospital’s new expansion.
Combis also has been involved in his community offering insight into miniature models to such groups as the Marysville Art Guild and to local elementary school teachers. Most of the time he just builds gifts for friends and family.
He and his wife Rosemary have been married for 32 years and have two children and two grandchildren. Though he’s not sure he can ever give up his day job, Combis and his daughter Teresa, a graphic arts student at Everett Community College, plan to start an art gallery business.
“All you need is patience to do this art form,” Combis said. “I just get carried away.”
For information on Mike Combis and his artwork, call 360-659-0150.
Reporter Gale Fiege: 425-339-3427 or gfiege@heraldnet.com.
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