Keith Sommerfeld had another carousel
this year. A little smaller than his "show stopper"
a couple of years ago. Besides all the carving, he also makes
the mechanical works for the carousels. One of his daughters helps
with the painting. Keith is a power carver, while most of the
other carvers in the Guild primarily use edge tools.
Here is some more of Keith's work. He has gotten into comical situations. The stork on the left is being strangled by the frog it is trying to eat.The Cowboy in the middle is eye to eye with a rattler after the saddle slipped while his horse is having trouble crossing a chasm. The cowboy on the right is being carefully supervised by his horse at the start of the day.
Doug Macdonald does woodwork to
create furniture that will show off his leather carving. In this
case we have a chair and stool set with duck migration scenes
on them.
Here is a closer view
of the leather carvng on the chair. Once again the roughness is
due to my scanning not due to craftsmanship of the original piece.
Doug has given us a demo of his leather carving techniques, but
so far none of the other members seem to have tried it. It has
some elements of relief carving and some elements of pyrography,
but there are techniques unique to the medium of leather also.
We didn't have very
much pyrography this year; another form of wood art that is drastically
under-represented in the Guild. This funeray urn was one such
example. The urn is made from birdseye maple. Unfortunately with
the passage of time, I have lost track of who made this.
Here is one of the pieces that I had in the
show. This is the moose portrait that I did August, 2000 in Red
Deer in the class taught by Doug Harrison. The piece is basswood
except for the "habitat" which is a bull rush made from
a bamboo BBQ skewer. Doug is an excellent instructor if you every
have the chance to take a class with him. Although the class was
for power carvers, I was able to keep up with edge tools until
it came to texturing. Then I switched to power, and I slowed down
compared to the others. Doug showed us wet-on-wet painting, which
works very well for blending the different shades of brown on
the hair and on the antlers.
This is another of
my pieces--a stylized giraffe in case you haven't figured it out.
Of course this is made from diamond willow, my favorite type of
wood. It isn't obvious in the image, but the giraffe has its head
turned toward us.
One other feature of the Wood Shows is the demonstrations. Here I am showing how to carve a woodspirit in bark. (No, I don't have my pinkie in the youngster's ear!) That young fellow stood there for a good 20 minutes or more while I went from start to finish on the face. For his patience, he left with the woodspirit. We bring in a lathe and scroll saw for demos that run every evening and on Saturday and Sunday afternoons.
As well as the display of member's work, we also have a section of the show for high school students. For the last four years this part has grown considerably to more than 100 pieces. These range from wood vehicles made up to major pieces of furniture. As the number of entries has grown, so has the quality of the workmanship. It seems that either the students are seeing what others are doing, or their teachers are seeing what can be achieved in a high school setting. Either way, we are excited about having them in our show.
I hope that you have enjoyed the show. We are in the final planning stages for this year's show, which runs from June 1 to 9. If you are in or near Saskatoon, I highly recommend it!
Bob Gander, a frequent contributor to WOM, lives in Saskatoon, Canada. You may email Bob at r.gander@shaw.ca or visit his web site at http://members.home.net/r.gander.