“Dreamsong” and “Songteller”
Creator work for Ballast TV and Dollywood Parks & Resorts | June and December 2024
So this one time, I was hired to make a Christmas present for Dolly Parton…
Yes, you read that correctly. Dolly Parton owns a piece of my cut paper artwork thanks to the relationship I built with the team at Dollywood Parks & Resorts. I can’t publicly say that, though—this is one of the projects where all the details need to stay behind a password. Publicly, all I can say is, “I was hired to make a piece for Dollywood.”
Here’s the full story:
My husband’s cousin, Jennifer Ryan, had done a multi-year project with Dollywood Parks & Resorts’ Visual Experience Director Cyndi McCormack inside the new Dreamsong Theater in the revamped “The Dolly Parton Experience” section of the Park; and Jennifer and her team at Ballast wanted to create an extra-special gift for Cyndi to thank her for the great partnership.
Jennifer loved the work I did for Arby’s, and had been looking for a reason to bring me on to collaborate on a project. She and her partner Eric Fulford hired me at the end of May 2024 to make a one-of-a-kind gift for Cyndi that featured both the Dreamsong building and the video experience Jennifer and the Ballast team created for the inside of the building.
The Ballast team sent me one of their (very nice) postcards to attach to the finished back of the piece, and we added the logo for the “Precious Memories” video show above it.
I completed it on June 16th, shipped it out, and it arrived with Jackie on their team on June 20th.
Cyndi didn’t finally receive it until November (and I still don’t know why Jackie held onto it for so long, but oh well), and she liked it so much that she asked Jackie and Jennifer for my contact information.
I heard from Cyndi on November 15, 2024 via the following email:
Hello Scott,
I am the Guest Experience VP for Dollywood Parks & Resorts in Pigeon Forge, TN.
Last week I received one of the most meaningful gifts of my life. It is a shadowbox memento and work of art from our latest project; The Dolly Parton Experience. The DreamSong shadowbox you built so perfectly represents the work of Jackie, Jennifer, Eric, and me. Jennifer Ryan from Ballast commissioned the work from you. She is fabulous in every way.
You are an artist, an engineer, and a fabricator. I am so incredibly impressed with your work, I would like to have you create a piece for Dolly. This will be a Christmas gift for her from her Dollywood team.
The Dolly Parton Experience is made up of three buildings; Songteller, DreamSong, and Behind the Seams. The piece you created for me is Dreamsong. I would like to have you design the Songteller building for Dolly. Could you please take a look at the images below and let me know your thoughts? I need to know if you have time in your schedule to do this project. And if so, I need an idea of your suggested size, delivery timeframe, and cost.
I look forward to hearing back from you. Feel free to call if you have questions and would like to discuss over the weekend. My cell phone number is XXX.XXX.XXXX. I am out of town all next week traveling for work, but we can schedule a call as needed while I am away.
My best,
Cyndi (your new biggest fan)
I’m not sure HOW quickly I said yes… and I agreed before I even considered the timeline.
Cyndi was going to be in Atlanta visiting AmericasMart downtown from the 11th-13th of December, so she’d be personally picking up the piece on the 14th on her drive back to Tennessee.
Thanksgiving was also smack in the middle of getting this done. We’d already decided we wouldn’t be traveling for the holiday that year, which helped, but there’d be family coming to us in Atlanta instead. I knew how long it had taken to get Jennifer and Eric to sign off on the Dreamsong building concept before I’d gotten started building it, and I really hoped to get started on the build before the end of November.
It took until December 2 to nail down all the details before I could start building. The clock was ticking if it was going to be ready by December 14.
The DreamSong Theater piece I’d done for the Ballast team as a gift for Cyndi was complicated only because of the architecture and the tilt of the frame. The Songteller piece for Dolly was on a whole different level. The overall size changed during concepting: it started at 20”x16”—the size I’d build Cyndi’s DreamSong at—and grew to 24”x18”. This meant bigger EVERYTHING—even the size of sheets of paper and mat board I’d be using. I couldn’t use standard 12”x12” sheets of card stock like I normally would. We leveled up “into the next tax bracket” when it came to materials to keep there from being a ton of seams.
What’s the first thing you notice about the Songteller building? The actual theater at Dollywood has a giant, mosaic butterfly you walk under to enter. To replicate it, I cut out and glued on more than 4,300 individual 1/8” squares of foil paper.
Making memories.
And butterflies.
Created June 2024
16″ W x 20″ H Shadow Box frame plus Mixed Media: Paper, Card Stock, Mat Board, Watercolor Paper, Photographs
My husband’s cousin, Jennifer Ryan, had done a multi-year project with Dollywood Parks & Resorts’ Visual Experience Director Cyndi McCormack inside the new Dreamsong Theater in the revamped “The Dolly Parton Experience” section of the Park; and Jennifer and her team at Ballast wanted to create an extra-special gift for Cyndi to thank her for the great partnership.
Jennifer loved the work I did for Arby’s, and had been looking for a reason to bring me on to collaborate on a project. She and her partner Eric Fulford hired me at the end of May 2024 to make a one-of-a-kind gift for Cyndi that featured both the Dreamsong building and the video experience Jennifer and the Ballast team created for the inside of the building.
Rather than showing the full front of the building with the doors, I left those off and showed the screens Jennifer had created the story and videos for.
We went back and forth until a design was approved, and I got to work building out the shadow box. To feature the marquee of the theater properly, the columned frame around the theater is slanted so the Dolly quote at the bottom is almost right at the glass, and the top of the frame tucks in behind the top of the theater that looks like a church.
The Ballast team sent me one of their (very nice) postcards to attach to the finished back of the piece. I reverse-cut the “Precious Memories” logo so it would match the debossed style of the Ballast postcard.
My first “real job” when I turned 16 was working in the frame shop at a Ben Franklin Crafts store back home in Erie, PA; so framing and finishing the piece properly was something I had no problems doing myself.
The last photo is of Cyndi receiveing her gift.
Created December 2024
24″ W x 18″ H Shadow Box frame plus Mixed Media: Paper, Card Stock, Mat Board, Watercolor Paper
Dollywood contacted me at the end of November and asked me to create a very special, one-of-a-kind Christmas gift to commemorate the reopening of “The Dolly Parton Experience” section of the park in 2024.
The large “Songteller” building features a two-story metallic mosaic butterfly; and because butterflies are such a huge symbol of Dollywood, that was the building they wanted me to replicate.
The final piece I created was 24″x18″ in a 2″ deep shadow box frame. The mosaic is made of 4,340 individual ⅛” foil and metallic-coated paper squares and took over a week just to complete that central feature of the final art.
Once that was complete, it was time to move on to the architecture of the building!
To achieve the look I wanted and not make the building so thick that I’d need a 4″ deep frame to replicate the architecture perfectly, I used several different thicknesses of paper, card stock and mat board (all archival) to force the perspective.
I LOVE doing detailed architecture, and I went all out on the building using every reference photo I could find even though the butterfly mosaic was going to cover a large portion of it.
My client from Dollywood was going to be in Atlanta and asked if she could pick it up versus having me pack and ship it, which I was 100% OK with… but it meant I had a very tight deadline to get it finished by 2pm on Saturday versus having the entire weekend. “Songteller” got into its frame in plenty of time.
Little known fact: My first job in high school was working in the Custom Frame Shop at a Ben Franklin Crafts store, so I even finished off the back like a pro. The back of Songteller is a sheet of magenta Canson Paper.
The last photo below is from the day Cyndi picked up the Songteller piece from our house – another rare time I ended up in a photo with my art!
