Apprenticeship on Lopez Island

Given all the chips and dust involved with carving granite you don’t really expect anyone to want to watch, but it happened. A few years ago, a friend asked me what I was doing, and I said I was making a big chameleon out of a piece of greenish Lopez erratic granite. He said he’d like to stop by for a look. He did and took some pictures to show the family. A few days later his wife called and asked if their son Bryan could come to watch me work.

I sort of knew who Bryan was, a high school kid, but I didn’t know much more. “What the heck,” I said, “Sure, how about next Saturday?” Bryan showed up, I told him about the stone, the tools I use, what I think it will look like finished, and a lecture on how careful you have to be not to breathe the dust. He said, “When are you going to start?” I got him to put on a mask, headphones, and away we went. He even knocked off some frets and after half an hour said thanks and headed off. That was interesting ….

That night his mom called and said that Bryan wanted to know how he could come back and try stone carving? Really? This came out of left field. What could I do? Lopez Island is a small world in many ways, and I think, hmm, maybe I should go a quarter mile up Center Road and ask my neighbor what she thinks?

Yes, I know it sounds strange, but that neighbor is Our Own Dojo Tamara. I came home with a piece of limestone and an an appointment with the “teacher” on Saturday. Bryan and I looked at the stone first, checked out the hand tools he could use and took everything up the road for “class”. He was a quick learner, (naturally with a teacher like Tamara) and had a serious go at the new stone, before taking the stone and tools home to keep working. Wow!

Chapter two, that same night Bryan’s mom called and asked if there was any chance younger brother Manuel could come next Saturday? He was eleven. That is how it started, two boys for two hours every Saturday. After the limestone, we traded Tamara some angle grinder blades for some marble chunks and did two geometric pieces. After that they wanted to make animals, so I said let’s try some soapstone. They decided on wolves, the school mascot, the Lopez Lobo. (Spanish for wolf). After working on the heads with chisels and rasps and my lecture on how the tail had to be curled around the body, since soapstone is fragile, they took their pieces home to do a little more on their own.

When they came the next Saturday, Bryan had a sad face. He just couldn’t imagine a wolf without its tail sticking out behind him and sure enough, after he had roughed it out, the tail broke off! After more serious discussion about soapstone, it suddenly turned out that his wolf had had a fight with a cougar and the cougar had bitten his tail off! Of course. If only you could have seen their faces after polishing the soapstone to 600-grit in water and then putting on a coat of oil sealer. This all happened in the fall, and we luckily finished carving outside before moving into my studio to carve wood by the wood stove until spring.

How could boys their age want to keep coming back to carve with someone their great-grandfather’s age? And talk to him? Since then, they have carved wooden masks, a native style canoe with Tlingit formline details, a soapstone dragon to go on a neck chain, one sniper rifle, three pistols and finally an alder pileated woodpecker. As I write, Manuel is working on an alder eagle and Bryan is carving a big wooden, tail curled up, wolf.

Let’s backtrack a couple of months; I’m grinding away on an olivine frog when they aren’t there on Saturdays, and they decide on their own that I’m having too much fun, and they want to try carving a piece of hard stone. Is that a good idea? So, what did they have in mind, and how big? After checking out the local rock store pantry they both picked out a 50-pound chunk of cascade granite with yellow and reddish colors. Next question, what would it be? A rabbit for their mom. I said they needed to realize that the ears couldn’t stick up and other things, but more importantly I wasn’t sure using the angle grinder was safe, given their ages, so back up the street to consult with the expert. Tamara was very good at explaining the safety aspects and in the end proposed a joint venture; they would draw the design on the stone, I would cut the frets and they would knock them off. When it was roughed out, they could do all the smoothing with a grinding wheel and then the water polishing.

They kept at it and finished the rabbit in early November. None of us was ready for the colors that had seemed so ordinary to jump out when the sealer/enhancer went on. Success! Now we were ready to move in by the fire and enjoy peace and quiet with the wood pieces. The next Saturday we started the fire, got out the wood chisels and began to talk. The boys weren’t quite ready for the change. “We want to make another stone piece.”

That came as an unexpected surprise, but I asked what they had in mind and how big? First, we had a look at all the rocks within working distance of a power outlet and then a talk about what it would be, naturally, a Lopez Lobo! And as you might have expected, out of a very big piece of local erratic granite, about a ton. And then the little detail, “We want to make it for the school!” At this point, Bryan is 17 and a senior and Manuel 14 and in eighth grade, so not exactly what I could have ever imagined doing at that age.

I showed the principal the granite rabbit and told her the story of my being the boys’ mentor for the past three years and how they wanted to carve a granite howling wolf for the school and asked what she thought. As you can imagine, it was a bit unexpected to say the least, but after explaining our history of carving she came on board and liked the idea and hoped it could be finished before the end of school in June.

Middle of November, frosty mornings, rain in the forecast, not exactly stone carving heaven, but they had to get started. Once again Tamara talked it over with the two young men and decided they could do the fretting safely if I got 4” rather than 5” diamond blades, as they would be less likely to jam and kick back. Next time they came ready to start, with warm clothes and Bryan’s very nice profile design of a howling wolf with its head up and ears safely back and close, so as not to be vulnerable to breakage or be sat on or climbed on. Its legs would be close to the body and compact. For two hours they fretted and chiseled, and the chips piled up. At the end I said here is a spray paint can, put on an outline of the Lobo. They did.

Since they are the artists on this project and I am the helper, they hesitantly agreed that it would be okay for me to take a little of the excess rock off between Saturdays, if I didn’t get close to the painted lines, and generously that I could use it to fill holes in the driveway, which I have been doing since then.

Work is on hold while I spend some time in a warmer climate and winter rain puts an end to outdoor carving, but I can’t stop thinking of how amazed I am that Bryan and Manuel keep coming back, keep telling me about their lives and hopes for the future, and at their ages are actually carving granite, BIG granite. The first thing I ever carved was a little driftwood walrus for my grandmother when I was 18 and on a NOAA survey ship in the Bering Sea. The first rock was in graduate school in Everett DuPen’s sculpture class. It will be very interesting to watch where this story ends….