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From Eagle Scout to Eagle Carver . . .
Regularly folks will ask me, "Hop, what got you into carving?" I usually respond with the story of how when I first got my Totin' Chip knife safety card at a Boy Scout meeting I remember asking my dad that night "How do I become a professional woodcarver?" He quickly said he didn't know what to tell me other than to go buy a pocketknife and head to the woods to work it out. Shortly after that he took me to the hardware store so I could empty my piggy bank and buy my first knife. I kept learning over the years through trial and error, as is often the best path for creative endeavors.
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Shovels don't dig holes by themselves. Knives don't carve logs by themselves, either. And HOPE--Hope takes some work.
To carve something out of wood takes some honest blue collar elbow grease, especially without turning something simple into something complicated with CNC machines, lasers, or AI robots. There is some finesse in the labor, too. But it's sort of like the finesse your grandma had when she could just eyeball ingredients and nail the taste every time. It comes from the good nature your grandpa had when his jokes landed at just the right time. It's what I call "GRITious JOY."
Maybe you didn't have a good grandma or grandpa like me, or maybe you did. However, I bet you've seen a wood carving somewhere at some point and thought "there's something timeless I like about that." That's my aim as a wood carver--to make something timeless. I take ordinary blocks and breathe new life into them. I craft things that last long and tell a good story. I want to craft something you'd gladly place on the windowsill in your kitchen, hang on the wall of your home, display on the post of your mailbox, or gift someone you love.
Where did I get this desire? Some of it comes from my time as a Boy Scout. I was fascinated with whittling from the day I earned my Totin' Chip knife safety card.
More into my adult life, however, I began to face challenges. Broken relationships, financial hardship, death of loved ones, injustices all over the world, etc. If you have lived past childhood, you know full well there a lot of things wrong in this world. When a person begins to see the sin and the effects of that sin all over the world, he has a choice--face it, fix it, join it, or ignore it. It's ultimately best to WORK it out.
I choose to put my HOPE in the one who never lets me down: Jesus Christ (Titus 3:7 "so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life."). What I love about being a follower of Jesus is that he takes our brokenness and messiness and turns it into the good and beautiful. Paul writes in Romans 12:21:
"Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."
In my small way, I'm trying to honor that act through my actions. I'm taking just ordinary logs or blocks of wood and trying to breathe HOPE into them--to turn them into something worth keeping. That's why I started this personal mission. I plan to carve until the day I die.
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