Resident Artist

You’ll never find Gracedale resident Mike Kurtz sitting around bored.

A resident at Gracedale’s Tower 8 since 2024, Mike is always moving, planting—and getting creative—making things!

He walks about 3 miles a day on the scenic grounds, and he assists Life Enrichment in planting and caring for the tomato and pepper plants in the Gracedale gardens.

Today, Mike is sharing his talent for assembling complex wood models and engineering kits—some of which are displayed in the backlit Gracedale arcade showcase. In his room there is a bookcase displaying these works of art, including a complex mechanical model of a ball run that is mesmerizing to watch as the ball inches up the carousel and rolls down the chute—and a working model of an offshore oil rig that lights up.

As we walk toward the case, I hear him say, “The kickstand needs to get put down on the motorcycle, and the stagecoach door needs to be closed.”

I watch as Mike fixes the motorcycle stand and stagecoach, and Cassie Evanczik from Gracedale Life Enrichment helps him carefully add his space shuttle launch pad to the display. These high-quality models for adults are made from precision laser-cut composite wood and assembled by hand—without glue or special tools. Yet, Mike is humble about his mechanical and artistic skills.

“It gives me something to do,” he laughed. When asked further about the skill it takes, he said, “It makes me think because, like engineering, it has a lot of moving parts and I do this by hand. You have to cut, sand, and make sure it fits into the groove. You can’t expect it to fit right away.”

Mike was once a construction worker who did roofing, siding, and concrete. When I asked if working on models was relaxing, he said, “Sometimes. It depends on what kind of model you get and whether or not they have wiring and electrical to configure. You have to know how to follow the directions.”

Mike’s sister orders the wooden puzzles and models from a specialized catalog, they ship to her home in Lansdale, and she brings a few each time she visits him at Gracedale.

When you look it up in the “mechanical models” catalog, these intricate models sometimes come with a USB-C powered electric motor or lighting strands, and some of the vehicles even come with V8 mini-engines with working pistons and valves.

“They’re hard sometimes,” Mike says. “When you’re finished with something like the ball run or the offshore oil rig, which are 1,500 to 1,700 pieces, then you’re all kinds of happy. Then, you go on to your next one.”