John Paul Daniel a.k.a. BEBO, is an untrained artist that began making critters out of old barn wood in 1993. He had torn down an old shed behind the church in Kingston Springs and had the wood stacked in the side of the yard. One morning he got up and started cutting out the pieces of wood with a hatchet. The first pieces were very primitive. A couple of months after he had been making the "fish", John Paul woke up and told his wife, BB, "I had a dream last night. In my dream someone said to me,'you are Bebo'. So, after that John Paul took BEBO as his folk art name.
BEBO uses old barn wood-oak,poplar,maple,ash-whatever is available around the area. Some of his pieces are small, about a foot long, and some are over 10 feet long. The pieces are painted with tractor paint, fixall enamel to be exact, in mostly primary colors. The pieces can be hung inside or outside. John Paul does not use patterns when he cuts out his pieces. Each piece is cut to make use of the natural characteristics of the wood-knot holes for eyes, ragged edges for the side of a fish. He now uses a jig saw instead of a hatchet to cut out the critters. Most of the critters are fish and reptiles-gators, squid, lizards and snakes.