Woodpecker D Adze

This is an adze that I made in more or less traditional Salish style, what anthropologists call the "D-adze" because of the handle shape.

The blade was made from a chunk of serpentine I picked up from a road cut on Cypress Island, ground down by rubbing it on concrete. Lashing is split cedar root over pine sap. The wood is the only non-local material, being from a black walnut board my dad bought decades ago in Ohio (which has been dragged to Virginia and now Washington, awaiting the time when I'd figure out what to do with it).

Salish adzes were sometimes adorned, and I chose to put a woodpecker head on this one. At first, it was because I wanted to stick with a fairly literal image (woodpeckers being carvers, like adzes), since I don't know enough about the person or Tribe I was making it for to choose something for its cultural significance or meaning. On the night before I gave it, though, I ran across a story of Dokwibatl, who came across a man who was trying to chop down a tree by banging his head on it, and transformed the poor human into a woodpecker. My intent with this gift was to honor a man who helped in my transformation from ignorant outsider to reasonably competent Northwest archaeologist, and so the woodpecker seems apt.

The wood that became this adze handle came from the same board that I carved into a sturgeon years ago, and which I gave to the Chair of Lower Elwha. The adze went to the Chair of Swinomish (who is also president of NCAI these days), with a special thanks to the THPO of that tribe. In between, another sturgeon went to Nisqually, a big halibut serving tray to Suquamish, and a stone fish club to a young Skokomish fisherman.

I'm not a talented carver, but not a horrible one either, and I still have all my fingers. I have not even attempted to match the Native Northwest formline style, and may never feel adequate to do so. I've never sold a piece, but I enjoy giving them away, and feel like I've been paid more than enough by having the chance to give them to host Tribes and have them be accepted. It's a lucky life.

The Carving Itch

Like many Southern boys my age, I whiled away hours whittling. At a pretty young age, I was trusted with pocket knives and even hunting knives, which I used on wood, not food. A repertoire that began with "pointed stick" eventually progressed to "rudimentary tool handle decoration," but to say I was a wood carver would be to exaggerate. 

In Hawai'i, I was exposed to serious carving for the first time. I worked at a museum that housed wood, shell, bone, and stone carved into everything from dazzling mini fishhooks to giant images of Kuka'ilimoku in all his maggot-mouthed glory. In addition to a pocket knife that was my grandfather's and has mysteriously disappeared and reappeared several times over the years, I got some chisels, and carved under the mango tree. I never did pursue mastery, and had no teachers other than the chisel and adze marks on mute works of old masters. Fieldwork sometimes bestowed me with a chunk of alahe'e or kamani; I even muscled a thing or two out of kiawe, which is harder than most of the lava rock. The characters of each material revealed themselves to me in a series of gouges, snaps, and lacerations.

Seeing and freeing the form in the log or cobble felt good, and sometimes I'd spend hours that became days working on something. Other times, I'd do a quick hack job. Then there were times when I carved nothing at all, sometimes for months. I've always had a few carvings half-done, put aside until the urge strikes me to finish that particular carving. Sometimes, that may be years. At least one has a head that's more than a decade old, its body still a roughed out log. 

Then, I'd get the itch to carve again. Maybe to get that mellow buzz that comes with completing something long deferred. Maybe it's a new piece leaping out suddenly. Sometimes, it's just a way to foil a frustration to distract me from a disappointment, to avert anger. (Playing with sharp objects may seem like not the way to deal with anger, but it works for me.)

The photo at the top is the last thing I completed (although I have this nagging feeling that I did something else that I'm forgetting--but this is the last thing I photographed, so we'll go with it). It's a halibut serving tray carved from butcher block. 

It is also a lesson: save the butcher block for 2D giant octopus renditions, and do not try to carve it. The grain of each strip runs in an opposite direction, confusing and thwarting the knife. Knots further complicate things, and adjacent laminae may differ pretty extremely in hardness and texture. 

But with the help of a NW style bent knife, I scooped out the serving part complete with a groove around the edge to catch the juices (an accidental chip right where a halibut's anal vent would be provides a convenient place to pour off excesss). You can quibble about the tail, but all in all it passes for a halibut, I think. 

Now that that's done and given away, and a few carving-less weeks have passed, I'm getting that itch again. Maybe I'll finish the seahorse, or the woodpecker, but maybe something new ill pop into my head by the time I pick up the knife.






 my age,

Procrastination of the Species

 

Spring in Olympia. The cherries and daffodils are a-riot with blooms, buskers have migrated back to our sidewalks, and soon the Species will emerge from hibernation that they may Process. This last event is one of my favorite things about my adopted home, as various writings attest.

Last year, Oly Samba did the octopus thing. Somebody told me what they're doing this year, but I forgot, and besides, nothing quite captivates me like a cephalopod. And so in procrastinatory fashion, I have now completed a superfluous octopus. Not for the Procession, and for that matter not for anything. I don't need a reason to make an octopus, although I am just now realizing that maybe there should have been some thought put into what to do with it now that it is done.

Because, what do you do with a 6-foot octopus? Made of butcher block, so it weighs as much as a gross of actual octopi, and will be a shore to install, and a hanging hazard once it is up. Purple, with yellow and orange and electric blue stippling, not to mention day-glo orange suckers, so of course it goes with everything. For a few years now, I've had this dream (maybe scheme or half-baked plot would be more accurate) of staging a guerilla entry into the Arts Walk or Procession, but this thing is way too heavy to carry, and I'm not yet willing to drill holes in it and put in the giant bolts that would be required to put it up. I think it would be a nice addition to the Fishbowl brewpub decor, but do they?

Any ideas?

Neurons ablaze, Moctopus ponders his future.

Penpenultimate

I'm not generally a fan of ultimate anything. I distrust claims of superlativity, discounting nearly all as the data insist any reasonable person must. And ultimate in the sense of 'final' means there's nothing left to do but turn out the lights and go home, ultimately a let-down.


Penultimacy is where it's at. Journey not over, but a long trail of memories behind you and the gleam of the promised land lights the horizon. Something savored. Mm-hmm.


Penpenultimacy, before the before, can be a little different. Sometimes this state preplicates penultimacy, sometimes you can draw that feeling out for a long time, basking. Other times it irks, frustratingly far from either an easy retreat or effortless entry. Then there are the times when penpenultimacy plays fore to an especially good penultimacy.


Of course, a significant percentage of the time you know not when something is penpenultimate. Even when there's a formal sequence, the next to the next to to the last thing sits far enough from the end that chaos can intervene: that agenda they handed you at the outset is subject to change without notice. Penpenultimate acts affect ultimate outcomes, though, and a small right move at that stage can make for a more easeful and satisfying conclusion than last act last ditch heroism.

Because any given thing you do may be the penpen-, may be the precursor, may be the action whose reaction slaps you back a couple of moves later, doing good is advised. Penpenultimacy is the loam from which karma grows.

But still, uncertainty. The sequence shifts, or just keeps slipping gears. The penpen reduplicates yet again, and you never move on. I just finished a carving that got stuck in that state for a while. Most of my carvings seem to work like that: I make great progress for a while, subtracting chunks of wood, envisioning an end, but entering a phase where the shavings get smaller, my carving eye becomes oblivious to the obvious next move, my progress toward the final touches meanders. It is a dangerous time, when more than one work has wandered off course, or faltered and fallen into procrastinatory purgatory.

Often enough, though, from those penpenultimate steps and states emerges something that can, with a penultimate nudge, be beautiful, or at least completed.