Jean-Paul Varan, sometimes known simply as “The Komodo Dragon,” is the only actual Dragon in the field of lawn statuary research. A formidable intellectual, while still living on his island birthplace, Varan developed a complex philosophy of observation with only one visual aid at his disposal—a fragment of a now obsolete technological form, the receiver of a dial telephone.

To test his ideas, he stowed away on Jacques Cousteaus’ ship, the Calypso, and eventually found his way to the Sorbonne. Varan has lived in Paris for over two decades now. At the Sorbonne, he quickly absorbed the thought of the French postmodern theorists, several of whom he now counts as colleagues.

Some of Varan’s important books include:

• Garden Ornament as Signifier: Lawn Jockeys
  Leprechauns and Gnomes in Two Cultures
• Cement Sconce Contemplation in the Postmodern Era
• The Gas-Fired Rotisserie in the Floating Garden

Dr. Walter Rhys of Polar Wastes University is the world’s foremost authority on ice sculpture. Interested in the emotional side of visual form, he espouses an approach to classical lawn statuary full of warmth. 

It's now clear that Rhys' definitive text  Ice Forms as Landscape Ornament, An Uncertain Future? published some twenty years ago, was disturbingly prescient.