Under the Spell of a Dragon : Sculpture: Even the mermaid is entranced by the four-foot gold-plated work by artist/pilot Jim Thompson.

By DICK WAGNER

Jan. 31, 1993 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

SANTA FE SPRINGS — Jim Thompson’s weathered face and ocean-blue eyes reflect his career as an island-hopping seaplane pilot. His nicked, gnarled hands betray his life now as a sculptor.

He is 52, unemployed and living in a friend’s industrial shop in Santa Fe Springs, which also houses his latest creation: a gold statue of a dragon clutching a mermaid.

“Generally, I do the mobiles,” Thompson said in the shop, pointing to two of them, one of silver penguins and one of gold and blue fish. “I sell quite a few of them. I have one in the Wilmington Library.”

That one has a nautical theme too, with 52 sea gulls, and is called “Storm Gathering.”

But nothing Thompson has done, he said, is as dramatic as his hand-formed, four-foot-tall, 150-pound gold statue of the dragon and mermaid.

“You really have to do something like this, as opposed to mobiles,” he said. “This gives you a little credibility. I was trying to come up with something that demonstrates what I’m capable of making, and I got a little carried away to the point of doing it in gold.”

The statue is untitled, but if people want to call it “Beauty and the Beast,” Thompson won’t mind.

The beauty has long hair made of brass wire, and rests against the dragon’s neck. The beast has claws, fangs, wings and a long tail. His eyes are red marbles. One of his arms is thrust out.

“He’s fierce,” said Thompson, lighting a cigarette.

The dragon’s fierceness is directed, not at the mermaid, but at anyone who might take her from him.

“An oxymoron” is how Thompson describes the statue. “Dragons are supposed to be evil, and here’s a mermaid asleep in his arms. He may have just rescued her.”

A native of Syracuse, N.Y., Thompson came to California in the mid-1970s and flew seaplanes to Catalina.

“There’s a lot of romance in seaplanes because almost everywhere you go is tropical,” Thompson said. “And it’s nostalgic because the planes were built in the late ‘30s.”

He worked for five companies and was co-founder of Trans Catalina Airlines, which flew to the island from Long Beach and Orange County until it went out of business in the early 1980s when excursion boats, which were cheaper, got faster.

He was also with an outfit in Puerto Rico, flying celebrities to the Virgin Islands. “Laurance Rockefeller, Liza Minnelli, Sammy Davis Jr., Mike Wallace, Jose Ferrer and Howard K. Smith,” he said.

In 1976, when he was 35 with a lot of free time between sea trips, Thompson began to sculpt as a hobby, starting with horses and replicas of hot-air balloons. He had no art training but enjoyed working with his hands. His mobiles began to sell. In 1984, his sculpture of nine sea gulls was displayed at the dedication of the Newport Beach Civic Center Gallery.

His last job, more than a year ago, was flying a 32-passenger seaplane from Miami to Okinawa, but that operation also went under because of high costs.

For about a year he has been staying at the die-cutting shop of his friend Bill Coomes, who has helped him financially.

“You do that for friends, people who need to eat,” Coomes said. “He’s one of those kind of guys you like to help him out. He has more talent in his little finger than I do in my whole body.”

Starving artist?

” Striving artist,” said Thompson, who hopes to sell the statue so he can get back on his feet.

With no blueprints and starting with a piece of steel, it has taken Thompson--aided by torches, band saws, shears and hammers--a year to build the gold statue of a dragon clutching a mermaid. “Three thousand, one hundred and twenty hours of labor,” he figures.

He chose a dragon after discovering that so many countries had one in their mythology. He figured he had a lot of latitude in designing his own.

“Once you get to the library and start looking at them, you see that there aren’t two that are similar,” he said. “The Oriental dragons had larger heads and were more ornate. The King George type have long necks. Mine is a hybrid of all of them.”

But the sculptor’s sentimentality lies mainly with the mermaid, modeled after a woman who became a close friend. “I was cuckoo over her,” Thompson said. “She did a lot of diving and she liked mermaids.”

As a favor, the La Habra Plating Co. electroplated Thompson’s statue in 24-karat gold. He said he has agreed to repay the company (more than $3,000) when he sells the artwork.

Glenn DiRado, vice president of the plating firm and a friend of Thompson’s, said: “I thought he was kind of crazy at first. We plated it in pieces, a wing, a tail, the belly, the mermaid. It was hard to visualize this being put together. I thought it would turn out to be a mess, but it’s really impressive.”

Thompson envisions the statue in a private home or corporate office. He tried to sell it to a casino, the Bicycle Club of Bell Gardens, but suspects now that it might not have fit in there anyway.

“Casinos have the glitz, and this is not glitzy,” he said. “If I had done it in a high gloss, you’d have to wear sunglasses to look at it. But it has a subdued finish.”

Because he is not well-known, Thompson believes he is at a disadvantage in the competitive art market. “It’s a scary thing,” he said. “You’re trying to please the public and you just hope it works, that people don’t go into hysterics and say this guy’s a clown.”

On Thursday morning, he rolled out the gold statue of a dragon clutching a mermaid and took it in Coomes’ truck to a movie studio to find a buyer. “Nobody laughed,” he said. “They really liked it. I’m hoping they’ll get back to me.”

If he sells it, he wants to divide his time between artwork and flying--though probably not seaplanes.

In the meantime, he intends to sell his mobiles. “You do what you can to stay alive,” he said.