Archive for April 2014

IWC 2013 Winner Galleries

2013 International Woodcarvers Congress

Fred Cogelow’s Best of Show win­ner: “Ques­tions & Answer Equal­ly, Profound”

I always approach the assem­bly of the pho­to gallery for the Inter­na­tion­al Wood­carv­er Con­gress with a mix of trep­i­da­tion and won­der;  trep­i­da­tion about the amount of work I know I have ahead of me, and won­der at the fan­tas­tic carv­ings I know I’m going to see as I edit the gal­leries.  The 2013 IWC Gallery was no excep­tion, start­ing with Fred Cogelow’s Best of Show win­ner.   This edi­tion has some 264 pho­tos (twice that num­ber if you count the thumb­nails) of some of the best carv­ing you will see any­where.  In the gal­leries you’ll find 159 of pho­tog­ra­ph­er Marc Feath­er­ly’s excel­lent stu­dio pho­tos of the win­ners at IWC 2013, includ­ing more pho­tos of the Best of Show winner.

In addi­tion to the gallery of the prize-win­ning carv­ings, you’ll also find Mar­c’s can­did pho­tos from the Class­es, Award Ban­quet, the Judges cri­tique ses­sion, the Show floor, and oth­er pho­tos around and about dur­ing Congress.

As always, the pho­tos in the win­ner’s gallery are click­able, and will take you to much larg­er ver­sions of these great carv­ings.  (Much larg­er then you’ll see in any paper pub­li­ca­tion.)  The large pho­tos will afford you the oppor­tu­ni­ty to real­ly look at the win­ners in detail.

To vis­it the gal­leries, in the menu bar above click on WOM, then on The Gal­leries menu item, or click HERE.   Enjoy!

Carving A 1930’s Street Scene — Behind The Scenes!

StreetScenev3Ever won­der what goes into carv­ing and assem­bling a mas­sive project like the Car­i­ca­ture Carvers Of Amer­i­ca (CCA) 1930’s Street Scene?   Well, now is your chance to find out.  The CCA folks have kind­ly shared with us a set of behind-the-scenes pho­tos tak­en when the group gath­ered to assem­ble the build­ing and fig­ures cre­at­ed for the project.  To see the entire gallery, in the menu bar above click WOM, then The Gal­leries, or click HERE.   Enjoy!

Carving a 1930s Street Scene — The Book

Carving a 1930s Street Scene, A New Book by the Caricature Carvers of America

Bob Travis, Randy Lan­den, Sandy Smith and Jack A. & Car­ole Williams

StreetScenev3

Twen­ty-nine active and emer­i­tus mem­bers of the Car­i­ca­ture Carvers of Amer­i­ca are pleased to present a pho­to­graph­ic excur­sion down a typ­i­cal 1930s street, com­plete with car­i­ca­ture ren­di­tions of 11 peri­od build­ings and over 100 car­i­ca­ture wood­carv­ings.  Street ven­dors, ladies, fire­men, cops, bank rob­bers, dogs, an old cow­boy from a bygone era, a hobo sleep­ing on a bench, and many oth­er relics from the past are rep­re­sent­ed in this scene.  From a garage at one end of the street, to a three-sto­ry build­ing under con­struc­tion at the oth­er end, this scene rep­re­sents down­town Amer­i­ca dur­ing the Great Depres­sion. This book comes com­plete with  detailed instruc­tions for carv­ing a fire­man, plus paint­ing and fin­ish­ing tips and tech­niques offered by CCA mem­bers.  Help­ful tips on design­ing car­i­ca­ture carv­ings through sketch­ing, clay mod­els, man­nequins, and Inter­net search­es are pro­vid­ed, along with pat­terns for many of the carv­ings in the scene.

The idea for a 1930s street scene as the CCA’s next book project was dis­cussed as ear­ly as 2010.  In late 2011, at our annu­al meet­ing in Boise, ID, we decid­ed to move for­ward with the ven­ture.  At an impromp­tu meet­ing and group dis­cus­sion on a street scene, it became appar­ent there was strong inter­est in the idea.  With­in a few min­utes peo­ple were vol­un­teer­ing to cre­ate a vari­ety of spe­cif­ic build­ings.  Our sec­re­tary began a list, and in a short time 11 build­ings were claimed by mem­bers.  Some build­ings were con­struct­ed by one mem­ber, oth­ers by groups of two or more. Those not work­ing on build­ings carved fig­ures and ancil­lary pieces to fill out the spe­cif­ic scenes.

We’re fre­quent­ly asked, “How do you coor­di­nate a project of this mag­ni­tude?”  The sim­ple answer is, “We don’t.”  Most of us are sep­a­rat­ed by great dis­tances and don’t have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to work togeth­er dur­ing the year.  We agree on a theme, set the scale, return home and work indi­vid­u­al­ly on the project until the next annu­al meet­ing.  In this case, those not work­ing on spe­cif­ic build­ings had the advan­tage of know­ing what struc­tures would be includ­ed in the project, and could carve fig­ures and acces­sories specif­i­cal­ly designed for a giv­en build­ing or scene.  Final­ly, we sched­uled a work day in con­junc­tion with our annu­al meet­ing to set up the project.  Mem­bers brought their con­tri­bu­tions and we spent the day final­iz­ing the place­ment of the fig­ures and build­ings.  After sev­er­al hours of arrang­ing, rear­rang­ing, and then rear­rang­ing again, the project was fin­ished.  We took ref­er­ence pho­tos, made some notes, and called it a day.

For addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion, includ­ing how to order this book vis­it the CCA web­site at www.cca-carvers.org or click HERE