(gentle music) - [Presenter] On this episode of Post Cards.

(gentle music) - That's part of the fun I think is seeing how much I can do with or how much of a story I can tell with as few cuts as possible, rather than just putting more and more detail in it.

Here my goal is just to make it more spare.

(upbeat music) - [Presenter] Post Cards is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

Additional support provided by Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies, Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen on behalf of Shalom Hill Farms, a retreat and conference center in a Prairie setting near Windom, Minnesota.

On the web at shalomhillfarm.org.

Alexandria, Minnesota.

A year round destination with hundreds of lakes, trails, and attractions for memorable vacations and events.

More information at explorealex.com.

The Lake Region Arts Councils, Arts Calendar, an Arts and Cultural Heritage Funded digital calendar showcasing upcoming art events and opportunities for artists in west central Minnesota.

On the web at lracfourcalendar.org.

Playing today's new music plus your favorite hits, 96.7 Kram.

Online at 967kram.com.

(gentle music) - I'd say slow me down kind of thing, which is important.

The more we up the speed in our vehicles or in our computers, we need the counterbalance.

(gentle music) The world isn't counting on a little whittled figure by any means, but we do need that here and here.

(gentle music) Whether it's woodcarving or knitting or whatever it is, slow art is about as therapeutic as I know of.

That's what keeps me going.

It feeds my soul and I am delighted when I can hook somebody else as well.

(gentle music) My first exposure really to woodcarving was when I was about seven years old.

We lived just near Hoffman, Minnesota on a farm and had a country school.

It was the same country school, that one room school that my mother had attended as a kid.

There were about 17 of us in the school.

And we would very often, a lot of us would carry pocket knives and during recess or noon hour or something like that, we'd go out and, and whittle.

(gentle music) In the mid 1960's, 1965, I went to Augsburg College in Minneapolis.

I was in the choir there and we had a European tour that summer.

Oftentimes we would sing our concerts in the evenings, but in the daytime we would be in these small towns or bigger towns.

And we would just kind of wander up and down the streets and look around and drink in all we could there of the culture and the color that we saw.

(water gushing) (gentle music) I was also drawn to woodcarvings because I had not seen anything like that in the States.

We had whittled in country school and things like that.

But in Norway, there were tourist shops.

When I saw these little figures, this tall, it was just sort of love at first sight.

You know, I've fiddled around with a knife ever since I was a kid.

Yeah that can't be that hard.

That looked sort of, looked really fun.

This was, I carved this one for, says "congratulations Carl," that's our older son.

Decorah High School graduation May 29th, 1994.

So that was a graduation gift that he got.

(gentle music) There was not really a well drawn out plan.

Everything that had to do with not only woodcarving in general, but this sort of whittling thing, just not with a whole arsenal of tools, but just a knife like this, that I carry those with me pretty much all the time.

And that, it just, it just grew and grew and grew.

(gentle music) Eventually had access to a band saw so I could saw the shape of a horse, for example, and to get rid of some of the waste wood that I didn't want on there anyway.

(gentle music) I never got tired of it, just became more and more fulfilling.

(gentle music) - This is his Knighthood award.

Ever seen this one?

That's from king Harold and there's a metal there.

Well, that was a big deal.

I mean, he's a, he's a Knight of the realm.

(gentle music) (Rue laughing) Before Harley and Norma were married, we were both head residents in a dormitory and we would sit together and carve in the evenings.

Harley's carvings, his figures, they represent life in the Midwest, Western Minnesota actually, where these immigrant families had farms and he was carving his uncles and his neighbors.

They tell the story of American, Norwegian American immigration in the Midwest.

(gentle music) But you have in some of Harley's carvings is Lore, that's sort of extracted from his acquaintance with farmers and neighbors and people who just made their, their life in an immigrant community.

He pulls that out and puts it into form that lasts.

(gentle music) That tells a story.

I mean, there's two people there, they're working on a job.

They're moving this great big boulder.

It's a sort of farming couple you know, rocks in the fields.

That was a big deal.

You showing how they would work together in the farm.

And that's one of my favorites.

(distant chatter) - I'll probably do a lady.

- I'll do a guy.

- I'll do a lady.

- He does Scandinavian style flat plane figure carving.

So it's sort of a rough minimalist style with a single knife as the name applies, it's these flat planes rather than having very smooth cuts.

It's different than maybe the, than a fine art painting.

It was the art of the common person.

They had a single knife, they would carve figures.

They would carve spoons, utilitarian objects.

Sometimes it was just embellishments.

It was something that was accessible.

Everyone had the tools.

Everyone had a knife, like many folk art styles evolved from one person passing down to another.

- This basswood is the above the most friendly and very very commonly used wood when it comes to carving.

- Much better than what I'm carving.

So with the spoons, especially like a hardwood like this, when it's wet, when it's green, it's softer, it's a little easier to carve.

So if you keep it in the freezer that retains the moisture, and then I can pull this out of the freezer and let it thaw and it's as if I just cut it down.

It's just, it's much, much harder when it's dry.

In addition to the grain, you it's so much stronger than the basswood.

So you can get, you know, you can get a spoon or whatever, real, real thin and nice.

It's not a chunky fat spoon.

(gentle music) We have photos of me as a toddler, literally in a diaper woodcarving, and even younger standing in my father's knee, watching him carve.

So I was definitely his youngest student.

I think they, my parents gave me a knife when I was three years old.

It's definitely been important to him to pass that on and to see me wood carve.

I think more so it's important to him though to see, to see me enjoy hand work.

Whether it would be that style of woodcarving, or anything else.

I think he just wants me to enjoy working with my hands and making things.

(gentle music) - As a family, we lived in Norway.

Our two boys went to school there.

One was in kindergarten and one was in about third grade.

(gentle music) When we lived in Norway, we lived in a small town up in the mountains and there were people there that said, could you teach a class here?

And I was kind of, well gee you know, that's kinda why I came here for was to we came here.

It was a tradition that whittling that not everybody still had.

And in fact, most of it had just sort of trickled away through the years.

Here I was, young enough to be a child of them and, and I was the teacher.

But there again, that was very very helpful because I could maybe do some of the technical things but they could tell me the stories and they could tell me that the cultural background for all of this kind of stuff.

In the 1960's and '70's, something called Hansen's Law kicked in with full Gusto in many Scandinavian American communities.

The principal named after Norwegian immigrant and scholar, Marcus Lee Hanson, who said the third generation tries to remember what the second generation tried to forget.

(audience laughing) Norwegianess and Swedishness was something to be recaptured and reclaimed.

Even before we went to Norway, we had been involved with Vesterheim Museum here in Decorah that has a wonderful, wonderful collection of wood carvings.

And so when we came back from Norway, then I was invited to teach courses down here.

Finally, I was teaching classes in areas around here, but also, you know, getting invitations from Alaska and Florida and California and Vermont sort of all over the place.

And then also in Norway.

So I was flying over to Norway and also to Sweden to teach classes there too.

(gentle music) She's making lefse, L E F S E. Sort of a potato, yeah potato lefse.

And she's first she's taken a part of that away, made a little ball about the size of a, of a baseball and then rolls it out.

So it's like a great big placement, but then you put wonderful things on it like butter, sugar and more sugar and brown sugar, and then roll that up and eat it.

(gentle music) I can't put it exactly in real succinct words, in a sentence or two, but any kind of hand work.

So regardless of the material, if it's leather or it's wood, or if it's metal, it gets one out of, out of oneself.

(gentle music) Oftentimes when I'm teaching a class, we start out with something just to get us to use our, to use the knife safely and effectively.

Oftentimes we start out with a, just doing a carrot.

I call this a one carrot necklace or neck tie.

I use a lot of those, and I'll just go all the way around here now.

So this is gonna be the green.

This is gonna be the orange.

So first thing I wanna do, (wood scraping) kinda do the shaping of the carrot.

This is, this is nice basswood, which is a pleasure to carve.

Now I wanna sort of show off where the, where the green is gonna come in.

Notice that I push on the, pull really on the back of the, of the blade, I push with my thumb, push it through like that.

So I'm not, I'm not employing all the strength that possible with my right hand.

And I'm right-handed so rather than pushing as much as I can, I like to be in control so I'm sort of steering with my right hand, but I'm really doing the hard work, the pushing it along, the motor is my thumb of my left hand.

(wood scraping) Notice here that I'm not trying to make it as round as a dowel for example.

I like to hand, I like the facets and that's one of the joys that I, that I like when it comes to this kind of carving.

I don't want it smooth.

I want it so that there's, it looks like it was carved.

It has these facets so that when a person turns it in the, so that the light strikes it, so that there's a bounce there of color.

And because of the shadow.

And I always wear a bigger knife that has a thicker blade, and then I just go like this.

(gentle music) And that gives the, those lines that that say carrot.

(gentle music) This one was sawn on a saw so it's a straight 90 degree thing across the top there.

That's a little bit unnatural there.

So I'm gonna just shape that a little bit more.

So it looks more like a real carrot, make some marks across the top there, then give the feel now of a carrot that has just been plucked from the garden and washed, and it'll go on the table for the beginning of a meal real soon now.

(gentle music) - I got involved through Vesterheim.

They were offering a woodcarving course, and my son who at that time was in middle school I think we thought it'd be a kind of a fun thing to do together.

And so we signed up for a course that Harley was teaching and did it together just a weekend course on some of the normal figure carving that he does and really fell in love with it.

This is actually a knife that I made for carving.

- [Harley] Yes.

- So that's just kind of a, it's kind of stuck with me for awhile.

- That's an awesome blade.

Can I look at it?

Gee that's nice.

That's beautiful.

- I think it was about a year later maybe where the Iowa Arts Council offered a Master Apprentice program.

Harley called me up and said, listen, there's this opportunity.

And he said, are you interested?

And I said, absolutely.

And then once that started we met every week either at, either over here at his place or at my place.

And we would carve for a couple of hours.

- Yeah, he has a very beautiful profile there.

- [Lady] He is, he nice... - Well, this is one of the first ones that I did with his head turned.

- Even if it, if we turn at 10 degrees.

- Right makes the difference.

- Right.

- Right there - No, I agree.

Otherwise it looks like they're on a poster in, post office or something.

- Yeah like her face, just that few, like few degrees.

- Yeah.

(gentle music) Early on, you know you have a figure and it's just kind of standing there and it's pretty blocky.

And you're just hoping that it looks like, kind of like a person when you're done.

And as you get further along, then you learn how to kind of turn their head.

So it looks like there's more action in the piece.

And it looks like that figure is thinking or doing something like fishing or hiking.

As you progress, you start putting more action or the idea of action into the carving.

(gentle music) And that's kind of one of the ideas behind the Scandinavian carving is giving this idea that you have this figure that looks like it's doing something or has personality with the fewest number of strokes.

The fewest number of cuts.

And that way you have the simplicity of the carving, but yet the complexity of the figure that you're making.

And that's a tricky thing to match up.

Harley does it masterfully.

- That's part of the fun I think, is seeing how much, how much I can do with, for how much of a story I can tell with as few cuts as possible, rather than just putting more and more detail in it.

Here at my goal is to, to make it more spare rather than only realistic.

(gentle music) - Part of the enjoyment of woodcarving is not only the act of making, but it's the act of making in community.

Harley and I have started up a woodcarving club where we've taken some of our friends and people in the community.

We currently meet once a week on our deck and we wood carve.

And it's been a safe way to gather as a community, but also to make art and to talk and have fun.

(gentle music) That's really the joy that I think a lot of Harley's classes bring to people that you're in this environment, this electric environment, where people are excited and they're learning and they're talking.

And I think it made it easy for so many people to enjoy folk art and enjoy making things with their hands.

(gentle music) He's really democratized, handwork and woodcarving and lowered the barrier to entry.

(gentle music) Harley always says, if you can peel a potato, you can wood carve.

(gentle music) - I'm delighted that this weekend features the work and the presence of a group with more than a dozen delightful, inspired and inspiring students from Luther College in Decorah.

As of today, they've been woodcarvers for exactly 17 days.

(audience laughing) One of them is studying Art.

The rest of them are studying Biology, Spanish, Environmental Studies, Nursing, Accounting.

But I have a hope and a hunch that there'll be a pile of wood chips in their future as well, even if they don't make their living with their carving.

I hope they won't be able to live without it.

(audience applauding) (gentle music) I learned that nothing teaches me as much as when I am trying to teach someone else.

It's greased the way for connection with other people that I would, that I would never have been able to meet.

And that's, that's been the big joy.

It's wokeness into something that one really enjoys doing.

And again, that that's here not just as much, not as much as it is up here.

(gentle music) (upbeat music) - [Presenter] Post Cards is made possible by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

Additional support provided by Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies, Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen on behalf of Shalom Hill Farms, a retreat and conference center in a Prairie setting near Windom, Minnesota.

On the web at shalomhillfarm.org.

Alexandria, Minnesota.

A year round destination with hundreds of lakes, trails, and attractions for memorable vacations and events.

More information at explorealex.com.

The Lake Region Arts Councils, arts calendar, an Arts and Cultural Heritage Funded digital calendar showcasing upcoming art events and opportunities for artists in west central Minnesota.

On the web at lracfourcalendar.org.

Playing today's new music plus your favorite hits 96.7Kram.

Online at 967kram.com.

(upbeat music)