There's only one Mount St. Helen's. But a reasonable facsimile, complete with belching fumes and earth-shaking tremors, is about to emerge from a northeast Calgary workshop.

Soon to bubble and spark in a glitzy New Hampshire theme park, this 10-metre imitation volcano is guaranteed to send shivers of awe down the spines of kids of all ages.

Meanwhile, in a Manhattan museum, there's a lifelike talking tree, with roving eyes and lips that move in sync with a computer- programmed soundtrack.

"That was tough," confessed David Nolan, one of the tree's creators. "We had to bring in an electronics expert." Nolan and Andrew Hulbert, partners in a uniquely creative private company known as Studio Y Creations, don't normally say no to a challenge.

Dave Olecko, Business Edge
Artist David Nolan has sculpted everything from pachyderms to tiger poop.

For Drumheller's Tyrrell Museum, they reproduced the anatomically correct heads of 10 velociraptors, speed-burning dinosaurs from the Cretaceous period.

That same New Hampshire theme park has ordered a gargantuan great white shark, jaws agape, to serve as a refreshment stand. A similar park in Wisconsin wants humongous gargoyles for its haunted house. A small town in Alberta awaits the World's Largest Wagon Wheel.

Nolan and Hulbert, two 35-year-old artists who describe themselves as professional poly-sculptors, will oblige. Their medium: Ordinary styrofoam, coated in a durable rubberized plastic, painted to order and built to last . . . forever.

With a staff of 21, the partners have never spent a dime on advertising and expect to draw revenues in excess of $2 million this year.

An Alberta College of Art graduate who got his professional start painting Stampede-related cartoons on storefront windows, Nolan co-founded Studio Y (www.studioycreations.com) in 1993 in partnership with a gifted artist named Yet Ngo, who has since moved on. Hulbert, with a technical background in model mechanics, came aboard seven years ago.

The original partners began by crafting floats for the Stampede Parade. Working out of a cramped shop, they generated promising first-year revenues of $120,000.

Float construction remains an important aspect of the business. But as Studio Y's reputation for production quality and grace under pressure (working under tight deadlines, the company's been known to run 60-hour shifts) has spread, orders from the U.S. have followed suit.

Today 90 per cent of its work is shipped stateside. Meanwhile, the company's production methods have taken a giant leap forward.

"We started with a reciprocating saw in hand," Nolan recalled. "We'd get busy and carve a T-Rex out of that block of foam.

"There's something to be said for that skillset," he conceded, before adding: "But now we're pretty thankful for the machines." Some of the smartest machinery on the market has allowed the Studio Y team to dramatically improve productivity.

Nevertheless . . .

"At the end of the day, no matter how good the machine is, it's critical that the artist's hand is applied as well," Nolan added. "Assembly-line work doesn't interest us." But a super-smart saw such as Studio Y's CNC 3D router, purchased three months ago at an approximate cost of $200,000 ("that machine cost millions only 10 years ago," said Nolan), takes care of the grunt work.

An amazing tool, the router operates on four axes, sculpting difficult pieces such as the velociraptor heads in exquisite, three-dimensional detail.

"Instead of going to a mould, we can program the machine and produce those heads in multiples," Nolan explained.

He hopes to purchase a second router early in the new year.

Oddly enough for a company that has responded to requests for everything from ersatz tiger poop to a life-sized steropodon, Studio Y's most difficult challenge came from Pepsi Corp.

The U.S. mega-conglomerate sought a perfectly spherical, spinning ball more than five metres in diameter, with a pair of 3.5-metre Pepsi bottles underneath.

"Getting that thing to scale was tough," Nolan confessed.

"We had to build it around a steel frame and make it absolutely symmetrical. Then we shipped it in six pieces, in two semi-trailers." Naturally, the soft American greenback has stung the bottom line of a company that exports so much product to the U.S.

"The rate of exchange is killing us," admitted Nolan. "If you tell a U.S. customer that the price of a job you bid on six months ago has gone up 20 per cent, they don't like to hear that. Oftentimes, you have to eat the difference." Still, profit margins remain strong enough that Nolan and Hulbert have begun shopping around for a new and greatly expanded workshop.

Can a life-size Mount St. Helen's be far behind?

(Tom Keyser can be reached at tomk@businessedge.ca)