McClelland Farm Memories
Illustrated Carved Bellows
Carving (and ink illustration).
The rambling: Crafting wood leads me on a circuitous path at times, most times. I began relief carving on slabs of wood back in the early '80's after taking a night class at the local tech college in Tulsa, OK. It's not a habit, or an addiction, just a "comes-aroun'-once-in-a-while" thing. I never know when the bug will strike, like a tick but more pleasing, though both present themselves as an itch that needs scratching. I suppose it's an act not too far removed from scribbling crayon on your bedroom wall at age 6 (mom not a huge fan): making your mark on a surface, except a bit more permanent when gouged into wood.
The latest carving itch was triggered by ink illustration, oddly enough. Not a tatoo, but a move into adding drawings on the shoji paper in my lamp work primed the pump, so to speak. Projects seem to come along at their own time and pace. Seeing opportunities as serendipities can lead to surprises.
Th
e story: Our property on the Kings River was once part of a larger parcel of the McClelland family. There was an eight foot tall carving of a mother bear and cub, chainsawed from an oak log near the entrance to the farmhouse lot. Termites had many a grand party over the years at the bears' expense. Little remained, but the snout of the bear cub. My friend, Bill, is the farm caretaker and thought that might be made into a memory of the farmerstead.
The project: There was a nice live edge piece of oak with firmly attached bark laying about for years - a cutoff from a sawmill slab. It had a nice cathedral shaped grain and had a shallow carving of a country church on it, an early project not well executed. Time for a new life. Why not repurpose the slab cover the old carving with the bear's snout, and add an ink illustration of the old farmhouse above it? Carving and inking on wood are now joined.
The work: The poor bear cub needed a haircut: bandsaw removal of the rotting wood where the snout was once part of the proud face. Now, with a flat back to mount to the slab it was time to remove old dirt and debris from the original carving. Since the new cub would be viewed up close on a wall, not at a distance from your truck window, it needed more detailed carving to accentuate features of fur and lines of expression. Once carved with a dremel, I began brushing on layering coats of india ink to fur, mouth, tongue, and tip of the nose.
Working from a photo of the farmhouse, I layed down an outline on the slab and proceeded to detail out the house and space around it. It took some time to adapt to working with ink on wood instead of paper. I started small, dry, and slow...finding the limits of how the brushes behaved and the ink flowed on a scrap piece of oak, then moved to the final piece. The inkwork was shallow to let the wood grain show through and give it a dreamy quality. The new snout was screwed onto the slab through the back and all finshed with a super blonde shellac, topped with bees wax...recommended by 4 out of 5 bears.
