This post builds on the previous one that explained that each bird carving should tell a story. A northern cardinal is the star of my favorite carving story. My tai chi teacher, Lijun Cheng, asked her friend Ma Dao Ren to paint a picture for me when I met him during a trip to China in 2008. The painting titled Passing Treasure from Generation to Generation was simple – a daikon radish and a head of bok choy, yet it conveyed multiple layers of Daoist symbolism. I failed to find someone to mount the rice paper painting on a traditional Chinese scroll after I returned to the United States. When Lijun and her husband, Wen Tao, went to China to visit family they took my painting with them and had it mounted in a six-hundred year old frame shop in Beijing. They refused to allow me to reimburse their expense for framing so I decided to create a carving as a thank you. I settled on a northern cardinal as my subject then spent weeks pondering a setting. A round base on which I arranged sand from a beach I visited and water formed with a clear epoxy into a shape that suggested yin and yang in a tai chi symbol formed a mini universe. The cardinal perched on one of three carved rocks that rested in the sand to represent jing, qi, and shen (vitality, energy, and spirit) which Daoists call “the three treasures.” I titled the carving Treasure in a Small Universe. I cannot write Chinese, but when I asked a Chinese friend to write the title in Chinese on a rock she insisted it was unthinkable that I would not write the title myself! Jean wrote the title on a piece of paper and sent me home to practice. A week later, my attempts to write Chinese were impossible to read even after lots of practice so she told me to bring my paint, pen, and one of the three treasure rocks to class. We snuck out of class tai chi class to inscribe the title. I prepared the paint and special pen, but she still insisted I write the title myself! She wrote the first line of the first character on a piece of paper then told me exactly where to put the pen on a rock where I was to mimic her line. She wrote the next line on paper and told me where to place my pen tip and when to stop. We moved through each character line by line until I had written the entire title myself! The carving ended up in Lijun and Wen Tao’s family room on a shelf bearing family pictures and the scroll painting on a wall in my living room. |
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I was mesmerized by the lifelike birds created by a friend who started carving around1980, but could not imagine having the patience to spend hours on a small carving. Twenty years and two random acts of kindness later, I became a carver myself.
First, I wandered into the Wendell Gilley Museum in Southwest Harbor on Mount Desert Island in Maine where I watched Carver-in-Residence, Steven Valleau work on a carving for what was much longer than the typical museum visitor. He handed me a knife and a black-capped chickadee blank then gave me an impromptu lesson that lasted more than an hour. Steve could see that I was hooked so he sent me home with a pattern and two extra blanks so I could try on my own. I needed a knife so I went to MDI Woodcarvers Supply which was located on Mount Desert Island at that time only to find that they are a mail order business. The owner saw how disappointed I was not to be able to quickly follow up on my lesson so he ushered me into his stock room anyway and sold me a knife, safety gloves, paint, and a book called Songbird Carving by Roslyn Daisey which included instructions for carving and painting a black-capped chickadee and a few other species. Daisey’s book helped, but I was too inexperienced to fully understand the instructions. My first trio of chickadees was terrible. The third was as bad as the first. A friend named them “wounded birds.” Clearly, I needed help. The closest teachers I could find lived ninety minutes from my home, but I didn’t care that it was so far because carving was so enjoyable. My first carving, completed in 2003, was a miniature common loon. For several years I made the long drive every week to the studio of Lorne and Maria LaGoy who taught me how to carve. Every carver has his or her own story of beginning to carve. If you are a carver, please consider leaving your story as a comment. |
ABOUT AUTHORJanice has been a bird carver since 2002. She carves basswood with knives and tupelo with power tools. Her favorite is which ever wood she has in her hands at the moment. Archives
April 2020
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