RALEIGH -- The Barrel Monster artist says he's tired of working in theorange-plastic-traffic-barrel medium that made him famous.
Luckily for Joe Carnevale's many fans, though, he's not done with stuff taken from roadsides. On Saturday at an intersection in the heart of Cameron Village shopping center, he erected a giant, sword-waving knight crafted from old road signs. This time it was all legitimate, done at the invitation of the shopping center as part of a celebration tied to Earth Day.
Carnevale became an instant celebrity last spring after he was arrested for stealing traffic barrels from Hillsborough Street then turning them into a scary-yet-appealing hitch-hiking monster that suddenly reappeared one night amid its unsculpted brethren.
Then the monster appeared on YouTube. Then, among other places, onNational Public Radio and in the Los Angeles Times and Time Magazine.
In just a year, Carnevale has become Raleigh's unofficial artist-in-residence. His work - some of it part of his 50-hour community service agreement after the barrel arrest - has appeared at several sites in the city. Among the sightings: A follow-up "Barrel Couple" on Hillsborough Street, two barrel monsters at the N.C. State Fair and a Barrel Dinosaur at a Fayetteville Street intersection during the SPARKcon festival.
The knight, though, may be one of his last creations here.
In case it wasn't clear after the Barrel Monster incident, Carnevale, 22, is an untamed spirit. As he assembled the knight Saturday he said that after he completes his history degree at N.C. State University in two semesters he hopes to sell his condo and roam the world.
He's not sure he'll be coming back.
"This area, the physical place is really, really nice, but the government, there are just too many rules and regulations," he said, going on to cite things such as the ease of earning a speeding ticket to Raleigh's sign ordinances, which he says are tougher than in his native Indiana.
He's serious about this stance on rules and not just because of the legal hassles over that first monster. One of his other big passions is what he calls urban adventure, which, he said in an interview last year, involves things such as climbing tall stuff he really shouldn't.
Indeed, he has a Web site about this passion, which features pictures and stories of surreptitious expeditions into construction sites, the tops of bridges and whatever lies beneath manhole covers.
Asked Saturday whether he's still climbing things, Carnevale said, "Not in Raleigh."
The name of the Web site? nopromiseofsafety.com
On Saturday, though, before starting the on-site assembly of the knight, Carnevale donned a safety vest and hard hat, something his sponsor, LeChase Construction Services of Durham, required. Not that he had sold out: The fee really only covered his materials, said Pat Hunnell, a spokeswoman for Cameron Village.
The knight is supposed to stay up for two weeks, but it turned out so well that there is talk among shopping center officials about keeping it up longer, she said.
It was a hit Saturday even before it was finished. A handful of Carnevale fans showed up early, and others wandered up throughout the three-hour job to watch and snap pictures as Carnevale bent sections of a sign into tubes to craft the legs before attaching the pre-made upper body.
It was the first time he had built so much of a sculpture on-site for an audience, but he moved so quickly and surely that it almost seemed as if he had built the sculpture before.
Jordan Allen, a shy 9-year-old from Raleigh wearing a Barrel Monster T-shirt, and his parents, Jeff and Courtney Allen, were among the first to arrive, bringing a folding chair and grabbing a spot under a nearby tree from which to watch.
Jordan was delighted to see that the main sign across the knight's face was for Jordan Road. He even mustered enough courage to join his father in helping hold the torso up while Carnevale used heavy screws to fasten it in place.
Jordan delights in showing his parents Carnevale's work on the computer; he changed his screen desktop to a photo of the original Barrel Monster, his father said.
His parents used the Barrel Monster story to teach him about right and wrong, and Jordan understands, they said. Not that it dampened his enthusiasm.
"Not long ago we were driving past a barrel that had apparently been thrown away, and he said 'Mom, can we get it?' " Courtney Allen said.
Carnevale said he had been thinking about a sculpture made of metal signs before Cameron Village approached him.
The plastic barrels had become such a success that they were starting to fence him in. And Carnevale is not to be fenced.
"I'm just sick of those stupid things," he said. "Plus you can get more shape out of metal like this."
The sword, for example, just wouldn't have worked if he had cut it from the curved orange plastic.
And the signs were obtained through proper channels from Wake County, which otherwise would have recycled them.
"So I didn't have to go running around in the middle of the night with a [reciprocating saw], which is a good thing, I guess," Carnevale said.
He didn't sound convinced, though.
