Patrick “Pat” Acton created his first model out of matchsticks in 1977, a church, using 500 matchsticks. This year he ...

Farmhand Stanley Offord’s artistic streak came from out of the blue 50 years ago: no guidance, no fancy art supplies, no art school. “I was just sitting there one day,” he said. He thought of ...

Some of Pat Acton’s creations, housed in the museum, include the U.S. Capitol and Notre Dame Cathedral. It’s 10 a.m. in Gladbrook, Iowa, and down in the workshop in his basement, Pat Acton is doing ...

GLADBROOK, Iowa (AP) -- We could start anywhere, but the USS Iowa, just inside the front door of the Gladbrook museum, is as good as any. It took Pat Acton 800 hours and 137,000 wooden matchsticks -- ...

Hour by hour, stick by stick. Many would regard it as a tedious job to glue matchsticks together, wait for them to dry then repeat this process over and over again, but not this model-maker. Over the ...

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... The first thing Paul Marti wants you to understand about his odd and wondrous matchstick creations — his delicate cathedrals, soaring castles, luxe mansions ...

Not many people play with matches and get paid for it. Pat Acton does. He spends hours at a workbench nestled in his Gladbrook basement, carefully gluing together hundreds of matchsticks, 2 1/8-inch ...

FREDERICK, Md. (AP) -- Farmhand Stanley Offord's artistic streak came from out of the blue 50 years ago: no guidance, no fancy art supplies, no art school. "I was just sitting there one day," he said.

It’s 10 a.m. in Gladbrook, Iowa, and down in the workshop in his basement, Pat Acton is doing what he does almost every morning: picking up matchsticks and gluing them together, one at a time. And ...