Elvis Guided Me'Elvis guided me'A Bandon man was a $54 1.50 winner in last Saturday's Mega Bucks Oregon Lottery drawing.Bernard DalMazzo, a local sculptor who has lived in the area for number of years, picked five out of six needed numbers on a ticket purchased at Ray's Sentry. Dal Mazzo said he believes his win was guided by an unseen force."As I was playing the Mega Bucks last Thursday, I noticed a reflection on the screen," DalMazzo said. "Al first I thought it was somebody standing behind me, but I turned and there was no one there. But I could still see an image of a white jacket with sequins. I thought it might be Liberace, but then I saw that the sideburns were darker. After that my hands were guided."DalMazzo added that he is a firm "Elvis is Alive" believer. When asked what he would do with his money, he said he was going to "buy Alcatraz and make it into a tourist attraction."All joking aside, DalMazzo said he was delighted with his win and thinks most folks in Bandon are "too serious." - Bernie DalMazzoFrom 'the world newspaper' 1989

Stay away from Brasso or other metal cleaners... stick with very small amounts of mineral or olive oil apply with a hanky. The more you rub the bronzes the more depth and color you'll get.

From Vol. 1 No. 10 Coast Magazine July, 1979.  A writeup of Bernie Dalmazzo's Shop in Bandon Oregon. - Article in PDF

The Rock Garden

Crafts "non-shop" in Bandon

Text and Photos by
Kathy Moritz

The Breuer building, now owned by the Hannas, was built in 1904, and housed Michael Breuer's men's clothing store and shoe shop through the 1940's, surviving both of Bandon's disastrous fires unscathed. Its recent metamorphosis began in the early seventies, when Bernie Dalmazzo, a bronze sculptor, opened Gentle Visions, a representation of over forty local artists, expanding into the lean-to with a candle shop, a leather works, and a silver shop.

"When I first came, in 1974," recalls Gary Ekker, a potter who now shares the building with Bernie, "I would notice things for months that I hadn't noticed before; the place was floor-to-ceiling shelves. But it wasn't chaotic; if somebody had moved something, put it back in a different spot, you could see it right away."

"It seems to me that I came alive in the sixties," Bernie recalls. "People were becoming more involved with the things they were using. They were looking around, and it seemed we were surrounded with plastics. People started working with natural materials, and a craft shop came out of this. We always managed to keep a free and easy spirit, and there was a lot of energy." But nothing remains unchanged, and Gentle Visions, in its time, became past. "People are still asking me, 'Why did you change the name?. Because the place isn't "Gentle Visions" anymore, not at all. We're doing a completely different thing now. Anyway, I'm not a merchant. I didn't have time for my own work, I was so busy talking about everybody else's. And by that time, the crafts world had become the McDonald's of the hippie generation.