CONTENTS
Page One:
- Katherine Boland: Her New Exhibit On Fire
Page Two:
- M. Jordan Tierney: at the National Museum of Women in the Arts
Page Three:
- Ivan Govaerts: Figurative and Ornamental Art
- Kenneth Wooten: Folk Style Decorative Art
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Tiger |
Pyrographic artist Ivan Govaerts "lives in a small town, Malines, in a small country, Belgium, in Europe, where he was born in 1971 on the 22nd of July" and where he was raised, too. It was thanks to his father, who was a gymnastics teacher, that Ivan grew up in a rich cultural environment of classical music and ballet, and even studied the ballet himself for eight years. But he says that's another story. . .
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Box with Geometric Design |
Ivan's discovery of pyrographic art was in a much more random way. It
began in 1989, when Ivan went to a trade school to learn upholstering
and simultaneously started to work in a seat factory. Over time, he
learned by himself to use the woodworking machines at the sawmill and
made some things from scrap wood. In 1997 he made a table for his
computer from
pallet wood, and went on to try more things. When he came to the
realization that nearly everything that has to do with wood interested
him, he began expanding his experiments to include chip carving,
woodcarving, marquetry, and more.
And he bought a book about woodcarving. That was where Ivan
read that carved birds can be detailed using a pyrography tool.
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A Special Present
That little tidbit in his book on woodcarving sparked the idea that he
could use such a tool to put his signature on the boxes he was making.
His wife gave him a present of a pyrography tool before he had even a
notion that so much more was possible with it. |
Exploring the PossibilitiesIvan remembered his first attempts, and recounted that he "started to try something with this tool and realized it was possible to make simple drawings. The first one was a bird and some very simple landscapes drawn with lines." |
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Enter the Mentor: The Next Step"In 1999 I met Francois Peeters," Ivan says, "who was demonstrating his pyro work at a wood show in Antwerp. I saw that there was a lot more possible with the tool than I was doing till then. He was working with a shading tip and made beautiful pieces. I asked him for some advice and got his address." |
A happy coincidence. As it turned out, Ivan's new friend and
mentor lived only about 2 kilometers (1-1/4 miles) from Ivan's house.
At the first opportunity, Ivan went to a shop to buy a shading tip and
started to experiment. "After that," Ivan said, "I
searched for new materials like basswood, which is hard to find in Belgium."
"From that moment I knew I wanted to stay with this art form for
a long time."
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Desk Accessories |
At nearly 32 years of age Ivan Govaerts is a self-made man who, without
relying on a formal academic education, has found his way in the world
thanks to his own exploration and personal realization of the things
that matter to him. Not only has he found an art form that is
significant for him, he has defined a personal decorative style that
reflects his passion for two main subjects that motivate his work:
First, nature, which he considers the purest form of art there is; and
second, ornament in a wide variety of styles, especially Celtic patterns
and designs from classical styles like Gothic and Baroque.
It is apparent from the works here and admirable that, in the relatively
short time he has been working in pyrography, Ivan has continually been
experimenting. A visit to a varied display of his work in the Ivan Govaerts
Salon in the E-Museum will further reveal how he changes the pieces
he works on in type and shape, the subject matter he uses, and the look
of each one.
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Butterfly Gourd |
In May of 2002, Ivan decided to make his own web site http://home.tiscali.be/ivan.govaerts
and with that accomplishment to his credit, he went ahead and joined
IAPA. It is to his credit that in an English-speaking community, using
only the English he learned in school and aided by a dictionary, he was
able to hold his own--in excellent English--and become an actively
participating member of the on-line group.
"I entered the IAPA message board where I met with some
great artists who inspired me to do a lot more with other
materials." Ivan says, "One day somebody talked about
gourds and I wanted to find out what these things are. After a search
to find gourds in Belgium, I started to burn on these many-sided things,
inspired by the book Pyrography on Gourds by Jim Widess. The
road to new materials is not ended yet."
"I always will try to improve and try new materials. Maybe one day it is possible for me to do a real exhibition here in my city or country. Because pyrography is very unknown here in Belgium, I would like to introduce it as much as possible. The highest goal or maybe dream is to make pyrographic art my profession, but I do not want to do something that becomes a must, because when somebody obliges me to do something, I react in the opposite way. In Belgium it is nearly impossible to make a living as an artist when you did not get an education. Maybe it is my destiny to convince people that an educational background is not always necessary to become someone special."
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Grizzly Bear |
American Kenneth Wooten has been living in Alaska since April 1970, and
much of that time, he has spent in remote areas, including two and a
half years living among the Athabascan Indians.
He only discovered his passion for scrollsawing and pyrography, however,
since the spring of 2001. "My emphasis at the moment, Ken says,
"is pyrographed intricate scrollsaw landscapes of Alaskan wildlife.
"
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Canada Geese |
Wood. Ken uses solid birch, which he cures himself from the raw
tree and processes every step of the way to the pieces you see here.
"It is quite a process," Ken says, "but brings a lot of
satisfaction when the final product emerges."
Technique. One example of Ken's technique is a framed
pyrographed picture of a scrollsawn Ptarmigan sitting in a willow tree.
This piece is displayed in the Kenneth E. Wooten
Salon in the E-Museum. The Ptarmigan is on birch that Ken worked
down to about 1/16-inch thickness before scrollsawing and then
pyrographing (all difficult to do without breaking the piece). He then
mounted the work in a birch frame made from the darker heartwood of the
same birch tree thereby creating a contrast of wood tones.
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Canada Geese |
The round and heart-shaped objects Ken designed originally as Christmas
tree ornaments and made them all approximately 3-1/2 by 4 inches. Ken's
designs are all his originals and he signs, numbers, and names each on
the back.
Pieces made from designs he repeats always turn out slightly varied
because of cutting imperfections and the fact that he does much of the
brush in the scenes free hand. In addition, some variations with the
burning and shading occur because of the varying hardness encountered in
any piece of wood.
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Trumpeter Swans |
Kenneth Wooten has lived in Alaska since April 1970 and much of
that time was spent in the back country. He says that all of his scenes
have been inspired from his personal experiences: his own observations
made in the wilderness and his direct encounters with wildlife. He even
lived with the Athabascan Indians for two and a half years, so he was
able to hunt and fish with them and learn first hand what nature has to offer.
"Since I never had tried anything other than stick men before
April of 2001," Ken says, "this has turned out to be a rather
surprising and gratifying endeavor for me. I am 55 years old now and
regret that I didn't find this talent many years ago."
Click here to go back to page one
Click here to go back to page two
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The AuthorKathleen M. Garvey Menéndez learned her pyrography techniques in Guatemala in 1975-1977. Her sister, Artist Sharon H. Garvey, later joined her there to collaborate on a pyrography project designed to promote this art form in the United States by means of a didactic book and a pyrography tool made by Navarro of Mexico.Thanks to the internet, this is the seventh year of articles on pyrography for the Woodcarver Online Magazine (WOM), started January 1997, and the sixth year of the E-Museum of Pyrographic Art, which opened its virtual doors January 1998. In March of that year, the International Association of Pyrographic Artists (IAPA) was formed and members began meeting on line. Linked from the E-Museum's Café Flambé, which hosts the IAPA meetings, is the Yahoo Groups uniting_pyrographers mailing list, member list, and chat forum set up by IAPA Co-founder Mixo Sydenham of Australia for IAPA members. |
2003, Kathleen M. Garvey Menéndez, all rights reserved.
