Fishing Bear with Sun
This large relief of fishing bear with the sun shining from behind was made in 1994 for a couple with a house in Blowing Rock, NC. It hangs over the stone mantle above a fireplace.
The house is sided with wormy chestnut bark shingles like so many others in the area. These are a reminder of the chestnut trees that were once prolific in the North Carolina mountains before the blight. There was a pile of leftover shingles in the shed and I was able to use them for the texture on the bear.
Maple, heat colored steel and wormy chestnut bark.
8’ H x 6’ W
Mountain Man with Raven
Fireplace mantle and pierced cherry relief of hiking mountain man and raven. In 1991 I was asked to make a wall piece for the chimney wall in this Linville, NC home. My first impression when seeing the beautiful stone work was that sure didn’t want to cover it up.
I gazed at it for a while and began to see an appropriate picture in the stone work. I made a full sized rubbing of the wall to map the grout lines in the masonry. Back in the studio, I overlaid it with a grid and reduced it to an 8.5" x 14" piece of paper on which I could do my design.
After approval, I scoured the woods and fields along the mountain roads near our home in the Banner Elk, NC area and found a standing dead cherry tree. I cut it up preserving the forked branches. With a homemade chainsaw lumbering jig, I cut it into forked boards and had them planed and kiln dried.
I drew the design on the original rubbing, marked the joints and cut out patterns which were glued to the forked boards and cut out with a jigsaw. The joints were mitered and spline grooves cut. Parts were then clamped end to end, drilled and pegged to lock the splines in place. All the edges were then sanded to a refined shape and oiled before fastening to the masonry.
This was the project that inspired the first version of my Sawing Curved Logs.
Fishing Bear and Raven
Fishing bear and raven in an Appalachian rhododendron thicket. Engraved steel with heat colors. Maple.
I made two versions of this relief. The design and the first copy were made on a deadline for a commission at Linville Ridge in North Carolina. It came together quite spontaneously. This photo is of the second one which I made for the owner of a lumber mill in Butler, TN.
The design was drawn with some beautiful maple burl slabs in mind. The steel was cut with a plasma cutter and the edges flame finished for a natural melted edge. Then each piece was colored with oxidation colors or heat colors. The black on the bear and raven is a burned oil patina. The waterfall at the bottom is hammered into an S-curve that flows down over the wall or base.
7.5' H x 5.5' W x 12" D
Fishing Bear and Raven
Fishing bear and raven in an Appalachian rhododendron thicket. Engraved steel with heat colors. Maple.
I made two versions of this relief. The design and the first copy were made on a deadline for a commission at Linville Ridge in North Carolina. It came together quite spontaneously. This photo is of the second one which I made for the owner of a lumber mill in Butler, TN.
The design was drawn with some beautiful maple burl slabs in mind. The steel was cut with a plasma cutter and the edges flame finished for a natural melted edge. Then each piece was colored with oxidation colors or heat colors. The black on the bear and raven is a burned oil patina. The waterfall at the bottom is hammered into an S-curve that flows down over the wall or base.
7.5' H x 5.5' W x 12" D
RMS Performing Arts Wall Sketch
In the 80’s I carved several phoenix sculptures inspired by birch seed scales.
Sea Dragon
Made in 2004 to hang above the picture windows of a house overlooking Kachemak Bay, this pierced wall relief of a sea dragon frolicking in the waves is about 14’ long.
Weathered fir, brass and hammered stainless steel.
Sicilian Street Vendor 2
In 1984, I accompanied my grandmother on a trip to Italy and Sicily. This relief was cast from a black walnut carving I made after a sketch I did one evening as the vendors were going home from the market.
9.25" W x 13.5" H
Stained Hydrocal
Open edition
Sneaking On By
Rising Phoenix
In 1984 I was among six sculptors commissioned to make a sculpture for the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. We could choose the location and I made this yellow cedar carving of a rising phoenix for the entry to the Great Hall. It stands 10’ tall with it’s steel base.
At the Breathing Hole 2
A lone polar bear and an arctic fox watch stealthily as a seal rises under it's breathing hole in this layered steel and wood relief.
Engraved steel with heat colors, cottonwood.
Limited edition of 6
48"~ W x 48"~ H x 2" D
Three Graces at the Seaside
The Three Graces enjoying a much needed visit to the seaside in this black cherry and burly birch wood sculpture.
This carving was originally meant to be used as an inkle loom. The holes were drilled for dowells to wrap the warp around. In the end, the three chatting weavers became the Three Graces.
Black cherry and burly birch.
38 H x 25 W x 8 in
Alligator in Swamp
This Black Alberene soapstone carving of an alligator was a commission for the University of Florida I made in 1998.
I had a slab of a cypress tree that was perfect for the base. The holes were filled with black expansion cement giving the feeling of bubbles in a murky swamp. I felt like mounting it on the wall as the effect would have been an underwater view of the alligator swimming towards you. It was very heavy and ended up as a table top piece.
It was stolen not long after it was delivered to the school.
Blacksmith and Muse
With anvil ringing brightly
hear the song of iron sung
where the muse is born of fire
here at Mardavhuan
This was one of several blacksmith related pieces bought by a collector in Maryville, TN in the early 90’s. The poem was inspired by his love of blacksmithing. He had a blacksmith museum and called his place Mardavhuan, a compilation of parts of his children’s name.
Singed black walnut.
24” H x 8” W
From the Ashes
In the 80’s I carved several phoenix sculptures. This rising phoenix was carved from a piece of a hollow cottonwood log. The flame is from a torn birch root and it is mounted on a birch base. It was carved and burned with a torch for contrast.
38” H
Rooster at Dawn
The crow of a rooster at sunrise. Cherry and spruce burl.
This wood sculpture was made from the naturally broken slab of a hollow North Carolina cherry log and an Alaskan spruce burl that was part of the wood stash we hauled south when I moved from Fairbanks to Tennessee in the mid-80’s. The silhouette reminded me of a rooster’s head and wing.
Walnut base.
About 30” H
At the Breathing Hole 1
A lone polar bear and an arctic fox watch stealthily as a seal rises under it's breathing hole in this layered steel and wood relief.
Engraved steel with heat colors, cottonwood.
Limited edition of 6
61" W x 58.25" H x 2" D
Golden Eagle with Fish
This carving of a golden eagle was made in situ while the log house was under construction near Knoxville, TN in 1989. The house was made with huge, squared Canadian pine logs. Probably the first home to be chinked with Perma-Chink.
38" H x 24' W x24" D
First Arctic Sun
With all the waning light of noonday dawn,
The day will end before its yet begun,
And dark and broad the wind will range and howl,
Yet never wrest the sleep from bear below.
Her driftworn tracks no longer share their lore,
Faint breaths now rise but soon will glaze the floor,
And deep in heavy slumber she is borne,
To places only yesterdays have been.
Through dreamlike icy barrens all alone,
She paces winter’s heartbeats with her own,
And when the season’s song is fully sung,
She’ll rise to greet the year’s First Arctic Sun.
.
This interior Alaska white spruce carving has been weathered over time and oiled to depict a lone polar bear basking in the first faint rays of the arctic spring’s sunshine. This 6.5’ sculpture was carved in Fairbanks in 2001 alongside another: Polar Bear Sniffing at the Wind.
It reminds us of the fresh outlook spring carries with it and the fragile future this welcome sunshine brings to a warming arctic.
Mountain Man with Raven
Fireplace mantle and pierced cherry relief of hiking mountain man and raven. In 1991 I was asked to make a wall piece for the chimney wall in this Linville, NC home. My first impression when seeing the beautiful stone work was that sure didn’t want to cover it up.
I gazed at it for a while and began to see an appropriate picture in the stone work. I made a full sized rubbing of the wall to map the grout lines in the masonry. Back in the studio, I overlaid it with a grid and reduced it to an 8.5" x 14" piece of paper on which I could do my design.
After approval, I scoured the woods and fields along the mountain roads near our home in the Banner Elk, NC area and found a standing dead cherry tree. I cut it up preserving the forked branches. With a homemade chainsaw lumbering jig, I cut it into forked boards and had them planed and kiln dried.
I drew the design on the original rubbing, marked the joints and cut out patterns which were glued to the forked boards and cut out with a jigsaw. The joints were mitered and spline grooves cut. Parts were then clamped end to end, drilled and pegged to lock the splines in place. All the edges were then sanded to a refined shape and oiled before fastening to the masonry.
This was the project that inspired the first version of my Sawing Curved Logs.
First Pheonix
Sometimes we find ourselves rising from the ashes when all we really meant to do was get a bit of a tan. So it was for my first phoenix carving and like so many other northern tales, it all began with a Raven…
I was a couple of years out of sculpture school and living in the two yurts I’d built and moved on top of the hill behind the little community of Dogpatch were I grew up. I was care taking for a neighbors place in exchange for squatters rights.
The larger yurt doubled as studio, cool looking and useful junk storage, and kitchen. I’d made a small wood stove with a soapstone oven built of slabs from salvaged sinks. It worked as both an updraft and downdraft stove and I’d made an angle iron frame inside the bottom of the firebox with a grate in it. Attached to the frame were two rods with hooked upper ends protruding through the top of the stove. With a makeshift, bike sprocket, ratcheting crank suspended from a yurt rafter and hooked into these rods, I could raise the glowing coals to just under the cooking surface. This way, cooking supper didn’t cook me out house and home as well.
Well, that stove was the tool I intended to use to make my new raven carving it’s requisite black - and all without instructions to tell me just how deep the coals should be, how long to leave it in and how often to turn it. I of course thought I was checking it regularly enough, but despite my best intention, it got a wee bit blacker than planned. The legs were ashes and smoke and it had taken on a simpler shape overall. Well, always one to see opportunity in disguise, my first phoenix and were soon found rising to the occasion.
Polar Bear Sniffing at the Wind
White spruce carving of polar bear sniffing at the wind.
Carved from a 36" diameter interior Alaska white spruce log, this 7.5’ sculpture was carved in Fairbanks in 2001 for a collector who loved polar bears. It was carved at the same time as another polar bear, First Arctic Sun
Fishing Bear with Sun
This large relief of fishing bear with the sun shining from behind was made in 1994 for a couple with a house in Blowing Rock, NC. It hangs over the stone mantle above a fireplace.
The house is sided with wormy chestnut bark shingles like so many others in the area. These are a reminder of the chestnut trees that were once prolific in the North Carolina mountains before the blight. There was a pile of leftover shingles in the shed and I was able to use them for the texture on the bear.
Maple, heat colored steel and wormy chestnut bark.
8’ H x 6’ W
Salmon Stream Table
Lifecycle in salmon stream. Engraved steel with heat colors on cherry table.
Commissioned in 2003 by a friend in Fairbanks, this table began with two flitch cut cherry boards cut on the jig I had built for a Woodmizer bandsaw mill. It makes it possible to swivel a log with a fork or long curve so as to always keep it within the throat of the saw. See: Sawiing Curved Logs.
They became the banks of a salmon stream depicted in engraved steel and colored with heat colors. See Engraved Steel with Heat Tints. All stages of the salmon’s lifecycle are depicted. Signs of a bear and raven can be found in the banks.
9’ L x 3’ W
