About : wood tv stands and cabinets
Title : wood tv stands and cabinets
wood tv stands and cabinets
lakeland public television presents common ground brought to you by the minnesota artsand cultural heritage fund and the citizens of minnesota. ? ? hi, welcome to common ground.i'm you host scott knudson. on this episode of commonground meet bob larson andothers of the bemidji wood carvers club. my name is bob larson.
i'm president of the bemidji wood carvers club. most of us show up every wednesday at the senior center and spendfrom 9 til noon carving. getting together spend a little time learning, carving andjust plain talking. this is the carving club.we have the same bunch most of the time but not all the time. well we get together likei say every wednesday. from 9 to noon and try to share what talents we haveamongst the different people.
carve on pieces that we've been working on, start new ones.generally just try and share information as best we can. help one another get our pieces completed. the club got started with just a numberof people who were interested in carving and felt that thereshould be a group that gottogether and did that. and formed the bemidji carvers club. a lot of times they will have something thatthey could add to your piece.
they have maybe a little bit differentppknowledge than you do to yourpppiece. sometimes they have differentideas always better sometimes to havetwo minds thinking of the samesituation same problem. and by the same token they may have a tool that you don'thave that you can borrow. expertise that you can shareand talents that you canshare. that's a lot of what we dois share talent. well if you're going to really get interestedin carving the best thing is to contact a fellow carver. come down
and join us on a wednesday morning. spend a little time with us see what we do, see whatyou're interested in. don't buy anything until you talk to us. every single one of ushave got in our tool boxes at home probably a dozen tools that we wished we'd never bought and we don't need. it's .... wise, wise i tellyou. it's too easy to get pulled in to somethingthat looks good and then
find out that you don't need it for the style of carving you'redoing or it just plainisn't a good tool. and speaking of good tools one of the prime requirements buy the best that you can afford. don't buy cheap tools you will end up throwing them away. or it will end up discouragingyou so badly as a carver that you will just quit becauseyou're tools are worthless. and we all have those kind of tools too. it keeps us busy on a wednesday
morning. most of us enjoy comingand even in the cold weather everybody will show up. in fact in the wintertime we usually have more thanwe do in the summer. except we lose a few snowbirds in the winter time. carving knows no gender. women are as good as men and there are as many women carvers as there are men carvers.it doesn't matter. women use as many power toolsas men do and as many hand tools as men do.so it works out well.
one of the things thati will say though is important for carving is you got to keep your hand strengthup. not always butsometimes men have tend to have a little bit more hand strengthppthan women do but that's thepponly difference. and power equalizes that up real quick. but that is one thing that i willsay that a person does have todo is as we age, you have to keepthe hand strength up in order to do the carving. because it does take some effort to push those tools through the wood.
and the other key thing then is the sharpness of the tool. you keep them sharp and they'll cut. you hear the old adage nothing more dangerous thana dull tool. that's prettymuch because it will slip and you'll end up sticking it someplace where you don't want it stuck. if i'm going to start a new piecefirst off i try and have an
idea in mind of what i'm goingto do. i'm a going to carve a face? am i goingto carve a mountain man? am i going to carve a caricature piece?am i going to do a cottonwood bark house?then i go find a picture or a piece that i like or an ideathat i like. i don't use live models, unfortunately it's hard to find some people that wantto sit still for anywheresfrom 40 to 200 hours. while i work on a piece. then after have to find wood. then youlay the wood out and oftentimes
i have to find a band saw,mine isn't big enough to cut the piece out so that i have removed as much wood as i can as expediently as i can beforei sit down and start carving. you are continually checkingyour measurements. and your idea, your photosif that is what you areworking from. to try to keep thingslined up as you go. as you carve off morewood you end up using finer tools. you get to the point where
you are down to sandpaper.a lot of people don't carve or don't sand their carvings figure it's somewhat sacrilegious to sand on a carving. i don't becausei'm working on women's faces and they are smooth. i don't like leaving themrough. we have our yearly sojourn down to doanecollege in crete nebraska. every year i go down there for a week. i just go down there to learn as best i can.
usually i carve with a woman by the name of janet cordell. probablyone of the best female carvers in the country. she's responsiblefor my carving women faces as well as i do. actually i just work away. start putting the checksin place getting a general shapeof the face down. i'll have some hair that's going to be coming down on the forehead, soi have to be careful on not cutting off all that hair. all of a sudden. i have to mark those in now.
if i don't put it in now obliviouslyi can't add it in later. i have to kind of work around some of that. try and knock this back down in toa forehead level here. in between the locks of hair without actually breakingthem off because the bark is somewhat brittle. then i can start coming up the sides of the nose with a little bit steeper gouge.well right now
i'm trying to lay out this cottonwood bark face and get some semblance of structure first. i have to obviously the nose is going tobe the high point on the face. we'll have to make that the high pointppand then push everything back in the wood in order to make eyes, and forehead. and thenlay out the mouth below that to where the structureis a little higher than what the eye level is.the neck obviously has to bedriven
back quite a ways here. so right now i'm just taking off wood to get to the fun partof making a face in thiscarving. this is just you have to kind of know not to take off too much. but it is basically a lot ofjust quick wood removal to getit down and have it to where you can use the fine tools toget the structure down. cottonwood bark carves veryeasily. it's smooth. it's easyto remove. it's soft.
one of the problems with it is it has a tendencyto be brittle so when you start workingon the fine details it will chip out whereyou don't want it to so you have to be cognizant of the fact your detail is going to be not quite as fine as you can get in basswood. but you can still do fine detail if you're careful with it. one of the things is that beingso soft it will easily dent
to the point where you can even make a dent in it with yourfingernail. to the point where it willactually dent the wood. so you have to be kind of carefulwhen you are using your tools that you don't bang the handle of your tools someplace where youdon't want a mark. going across here you could end up beating the end of the noseup. bad enough that then whenit's time to carve that it'sall nicked up and you'll haveto take parts off of that too. so it has to be treated a little special
but then considering where this stuff comes from cottonwood bark likethis is kinda special bark. this is gettingharder and harder to find as peoplerealize the joy of carving cottonwood bark and the uniqueness of the piece you end up with. it isgetting hard to find. because you can not getcottonwood bark off a livetree. and that's a good deal becauseif you could there wouldn't be any live trees with bark on them anymore.
they have to be dead.the wood has to naturally dry off to the point whereit's almost ready to fall offthe tree. and then they will come by and harvest it. and break it into lengths that's usable. normally this bark is found missouri valley and north, all the way up into alaska. southern united states youdon't get bark like this atall. they have cottonwood trees butthey don't produce bark likethis. high mountain river valleys is where you are going to findthis big bark.
and they are not easy to get to.especially where you can haul out the amountthat's usable. now it gets time where i have to sit downand do some measurements and layout again. it gets to a point where it doesn't look likethere is a whole lot going onbut this where you reach a critical point where it doesn't take the removal of much material to either make it or break it. well i'm about
ready to take her off of thisframe it gives me the opportunity to beable to turn it a differentangle to look at the whole piecea lot better than trying to work around this carving fixture. and now it's getting to thepoint where i don't need touse push on it. it's mostly detail work left now.all of the features are in and i just need to refine them. tweak the cheeks a little bitto get them back a little bit. and the form better. the chin needs to come down and the jaw
line needs to be a little thinner. the neck is probably going to go have to go back in alittle bit although thefeatures are there. the collar bone and the muscles in the neck. i've had to deal with the unfortunate circumstance of losing part of the noseand having to repair it. there is a plate across the hair that came loose. it had to be glued back on.i had to make sure the checks were on there because it's one layer
of grain all the way downthrough and it's the same layer. it's going togive you problems. i even got to the point where i had toppreglue the last half inch ofppthe nose on. as i was carving it, it just flaked right off and fell off into the chip pileand i never did find it. so i had to take another piece of wood from lower on the piece where it had to be removed anyways glue it on there and recarve it.it actually matched up pretty good. the grain looks like a pretty fair
match to it. super glue is the cottonwood bark's best friend. you can repair almost anything. you put superglue on to it let it soak in andwhen you are done carving it off it willvery seldom show at all. at the very most youmight see a tiny little shiny spot here and there. so it's repairablewith superglue. and the grain always makesthe piece look interesting
if not better. some people say it detracts from the carvingand in some situations it will. i would say that right nowi'm about a little over half done. it may look morethan that but actually in time it's probably a littleover half done. so basically it's time totake her off of this frame. have the long screws that i put into the backside through theframe work that holds it on.
so well this is the backside. this is were it comes off the tree. thisdark part would have beenright against the tree itself.cottonwood bark carving is getting to be more and more popular and good bark like thisis getting harder and harder to find. now yousay what do you mean good bark, it's falling apart on 3 or4 different places on you. that isn't the point. the point is the size
the color and thestructure of the wood itself. regardless of thefact that it may chip out and come apart at different places. that's repairable. but you can't build a piece of wood like this and they don't make them anymore. one of the advantagesof doing this is you can tilt the piece and you can compare height of various points as you go look down the length of it.
that the forehead is the same height here on both sides. you tilt it alittle bit the eyes start to become visible in the same place. here the eyelids become visible,the bottoms of the eyes and tilt it up and just it all matches. so now i haveto start to working on thinning down this area inhere. it's still a little too heavy.and work on the hair on the sides.
as you see me carving with these tools that i havelaying in front of me. theseare not the tools that i carvedthe majority of this with. i used my larger set of tools mallet tools. i guessi'm more used to those almost than i am these here. i can do smaller pieces withthese and some bigger ones. there is one of this size. but at home i have a larger set of tools i use. with a carving stand.
it's an expression of art. i really enjoy taking a piece of wood and findingwhat's in the wood. i mean i don't carvefrom a lot of found wood. a lot of peopledo they'll carve driftwood firewood some of thecottonwood bark gets to befound would too. you carve whatyou see in the wood. myself i guess over the yearshave found that i like to carve people. particularly i like to
carve women's faces. i enjoy making beauty out of a piece of wood. it's also perhaps a legacythat i can pass on. in both the piecesthemselves and the talent that i can pass on to other people too. for one thing with tool marks is in today's industrial age you can look at a carving and see the tool marks and feel that this is areal piece rather than see thetool marks
rather than somethingthat's really smooth and could be a resin piece from china. trying to promote the art by trying to get the best pieces that ican get. and do justice to the wood. like the friend of mine from crookston that furnishes me these big piecesof special cottonwood bark. he will find and save thesepieces for me because he knowsi can do justice to the wood. and he says there is not many peoplei trust these kind of piecesof wood too
you're one of them he says.i feel kinda little honored that way that he picksme to give these pieces ofwood too. he's been mentoring me along for quite a few years he seeing some talentthat i had back in '04 when i started and has kind of nurtured it along. now he andi were good friends and we get togetheras often as we can. we frequently cometo gallery north to display our pieces.the gallery asks us to come up
and fill in spots for feature artists a coupletimes a year. and we come up and gladly do that. so wecan display our work show the public someof the stuff that we do. everybody gets a chance to see it. we have a couple of carver members,les sanders and frank bera. we also are fortunate to have the woodcarver of the year, rick jensen from crookston is here. he is also a
member of our club andcomes over frequently. he and i have been good friendsfor years. he's actually my mentor for my carvingexperience. rick and i have known one another since 2004. he is known nationally and even world wideas the father and originator of cottonwood bark carving in this country. he has done more to revolutionize and influence
cottonwood bark carving than any man in the country. and that's not an exaggeration at all. any carving show you go to in the country you will see his influence sitting on the table if not a direct imitation. you can see his style influence on each table there. and he has been my mentor for years.he's a good friend and he's an expert carver.he knows well what he isdoing. especially in the field of cottonwood bark carving.
rick's carving withcottonwood bark is whimsical houses and other pieces that he carved haveevolved and changed over the years. he iscontinually looking for a new method, a newtechnique and new way of enhancing the carvings that other people can take home. that's what keeps his classes fresh andthat's what keeps his customers, clients and
artists and students coming backto carve with him year afteryear. he always comes upwith something new. this is the piece i started last fall and have now completed made out of cottonwood bark. and several others of mine are on thewall here also along with pieces from the members of the club. there is a couple things that i don't like about it. i don't like the way the grainlines run it. you stuck with whatevergrain is in the wood.
sometimes it works toyour advantage. a lot of time it doesn't. you put up with it you accept it and it becomes partof the character of the piece. i am tending less andless to carve faces in cottonwood bark because of that anymore. you some of the grain lines are quite noticeable and you always end up withsomebody commenting on how neat it is that you get those circles onthe cheeks and on the end ofthe nose. how did you manageto work that out?
it's like contour maps on the ground. ppyour high points show up better than the low points do.but it is detracting to have these linelike this in the grain and there is nothing you can do about it until you carve it and find out wherethe grain lines end up. this is a significant piece ofbark. and that it is quite large andthick it must be 6 inches wideand 5 or 6 inches thick. and as my friend rick will say
that kind of face bark is not easy to come by anymore. so i really value these kind of pieces of bark. and it has come out quite nicethe facial features came outnice it holds detail well. i like that about thisbark is that it holds detail well. the color is good.there is basically no finish on it right now. i had it finished with lacquer and it was too dark. i took the lacquer off and this is the unfinished piece
that is basically just hand rubbed with a rag to make it nice andsmooth and little bit shiny. actually i'm quite please with it.she come out pretty good. well, it isn't the first piece that i have ever carved in cottonwood bark, obviously thereare several others along heretoo each piece is unique it's going to be soft insome spots, hard in some spots some bark holds detailbetter than others. some bark is so hard
that it is really hardto carve it and others is so soft it literallyit won't hold detail. at all. it just falls apart. i'm not going to say i'm notgoing to carve it. but irealize the shortcomings of carving in cottonwood. it would be better with full figure piecesin it and even that again you end up with the contour lines and some of them are goodand some of them aren't. but facial detail in cottonwood
bark is often overlooked because of the grain lines that show up. working on pieces like this with the woodcarving club. everybody kind of pays attention to what other people are doing. if they can pick up a few pointers from something i'm doing that'sgreat. and by the same token i pick up pointers from what other people are doing also.it's a collaborative effort down there. that everybody helpseverybody in what they aredoing.
each person has somethingthat they may know a little better. some peoplehave bird. some people have animals. some people have faces. some people have flowers work and caricature work and we just help one another. as best we can. if you have a problem you ask and somebody is going tohave a better answer for you. bemidji wood carvers club went down to the shores of lake bemidji at the rotary pavilion and showed some of our stuff
and it was a beautiful fallday. the number of people we had down there in the club was good we had some wonderful pieces of art that were shown. it was lots of fun down there,seeing everybody's items that they had carved up. i had the lucky job of running the turntable. so i got a close up viewof everybody's items. it was just lots of fun.
good camaraderie with everybody out there. the viking ship wasactually out of the ordinary from a normal carvingthat people would do. but it was also very intricate and the items that he had used and put together. it was really interesting to see how he did it and the finished product was just beautiful.one of the items that we had, that we were showing
was carved out of a moose antler. which is not typically what people would be carving cause it's not wood. but it was still lot of intricate artistry workon it. and it's associated withwood carving somewhat. i think the biggest thing is that thereis a varied amount of talenthere. and that each of us carvedifferent things. we don't carve the same things.we have bird carvers we have fish carvers. we have relief carvers and chipcarvers.
and face carvers. i think that the thing that wouldbe hardest to determine is the amount of talentthat we have here. there is a lot of talent and not all of it is sitting at the table but most if it is. there is some talented peoplehere. if anyone should wishto learn about wood carving a good place to start would be to come down to the senior centerin the basement and the bemidji wood carvers clubwill have someone there
that will ably and willinglyassist you to get started with wood carving.you can expect people that arefriendly knowledgeable and morethan willing to help as best they can. we have tools for loan. we can furnish you with ideas and wood. there will always be help to complete the pieces or get themstarted. various artists have various techniques and things that they like to carvedown there. so you will alwaysfind
different things to carve and notjust the same thing over andover. one of the things that iknow people enjoy down there is it's warm and it'ssafe and there is good parking and thereis always people around. rather than out at some place where it's -30 below zero the car don't start. it's at night and it's dark. this is a good place downtown the parking is good and it'sjust a friendly place to come to and share everybody's talents.
thank you so muchfor watching. join us again next week for anotherepisode of common ground. if you have an idea fora common ground piece that pertains to north central minnesota email us atlegacy@lptv.org or call us at 218-333-3014 to view any episode of common ground online visit us at lptv.org to order episodes or segments
of common ground call 218-333-3020. common ground is broughtto you by the minnesota arts and cultural heritage fund with money from the vote of the people on november 4, 2008.