concerning carving

In 1987 I was backpacking through Arkansas and walked into a small town where I found a half dozen old men in worn coveralls seated in a pile of wood shavings that blanketed the porch of the courthouse. Each sported a knife and chunk of wood. When I ask a nearby merchant what they were carving, he replied, "oh they don't build anything. They just show up every morning, whittle all day, then go home."

In 2001 I shot 40 rolls of film of a sculptor carving a 2 ton block of marble. Every day he'd show up in the morning, grind, chisel and sand all day surrounding himself in a pile of chips and dust, then go home at night leaving behind an irregular shaped block of rock. He did this for weeks until one day he was finished. He then left town, went somewhere else and started over.

An art professor once told me that drawing requires discipline. At the ripe age of 18 what I heard was, drawing is work. Looking back it occurs to me that standing in front of a classroom of 30 people who basically pay his wages what he couldn't say was: 'to be successful at drawing (or any other medium) you must be in love with the process, otherwise you're wasting your time.'

I've spent a lifetime looking at beautiful things made by people and am still amazed at the ideas they come up with and the dedication that goes into their work. What is always evident, is the love for the process.

I have studied and dabbled in a multitude of mediums from computer generated imagery to sand candles and lost wax jewelry. I've built masks, stained glass windows and pipe organs. I've spent years exploring the processes people use to create beautiful things. For the past several years my studies have narrowed to woodworking and digitally manipulated photography and occasionally, I succeed in stopping the process before it all becomes shavings on the porch.