Working Through Winter

It's been awhile since we updated this blog, busy times with lots of progress on the community supported sculpture. Alvin speaks:

I am far enough along on the sculpture that it is appropriate for me to personally update the blog. There are many who are becoming interested and involved with this Community Supported Sculpture Project.
I want to express my sincere gratitude to those in our community whose generous support is enabling me to survive and work. So many have affirmed the vision and purpose of this public sculpture to inspire imaginations to gratitude and reverent relationship with the spiritual in nature, here and now, within and without "As So Above and Below."
Thank you to the Earth Day organizers for introducing and identifying with this project. Thank you to the Community Art Fund for promoting and managing the administrative work. Thank you for sponsorship of the Kickapoo Cultural Exchange who accept and manage the tax-deductible donations.
It is so direct and simple, the ideal relationship between a public artist and community, speaking for and empowering each other in a spirit of co-creation. So I imagine myself and my audience in a noble conversation about ethical, beautiful, and mysterious relationships, in all scale and dimensions of Nature and in the Narure of the Divine.
So many images in pop culture compete for our attention and confuse our wisdom with the goal of capturing the creative potential, the power and magic of our collective imagination for an institutional or selfish purpose.
When this sculpture captures the imagination, it attempts to channel it to deep places in our common mystery, to provide an experience vicariously through these gestures that connect us. It works for me, a prayerful process that guides my intuition, my hands, and gives this art life and purpose.


The Making of the Sculpture
The craft of wood carving and the logistics of creating the piece are of much interest to onlookers and the story is worth telling.

I will speak to the problems and solutions of a physical nature in the creation of this piece. Understanding the physical aspects of the piece must serve the abstract, the intangible, the elusive spirit. I know from experience I will not find it in the wood if I do not feel it myself and keep my priorities straight. A perfectly executed model can be empty and dead if its only purpose is to show off craftsmanship. But craftsmanship is essential to increase the potential of art to express deeper meanings. One is drawn in through the senses, so with the concept and a design ready to execute, I chose burr oak or white oak because of its durability, carveability, and availability. I chose not to glue up milled lumber when we found an eleven and a half by four foot burr oak half log in which the standing figure perfectly fit. The wood had some obvious and hidden defects, and checking would be inevitable. However, the piece had many advantages that would be hard to find in another log, having stood dead for several years with the core somewhat hollow, taking much stress off the drying wood. It also was slabbed in half, allowing the form to fit the grain and have the entire carving on one side of the pith or core. Its discovery was magical enough and timing was right.

So I decided to get on with it and to work around and with the flaws and risks. It is an incredible piece of wood. With the log horizontal on a trailer, I did the major blocking out with a chainsaw. Burr oak is excellent, clean carving wood with mallet and chisel, and that's how I worked at public events last summer. To set up for ongoing work through the season, I had to roll the log and stand it up. I backed the trailer in line with a tree, and with pulleys, rigging, come-alongs and jacks, I rolled the log and pulled it off the trailer onto a base made of bolted timbers. I stood it up and lag-screwed it in place, then I constructed scaffolding that allowed me to work on three levels. Then began the roughing out of the sculpture with electric chainsaw, an angle grinder equipped with a disc of studded carbide and mallet and chisel. This goes on for a considerable time, the focus is on the elimination of crudeness and locating the center lines that thread through the anatomy. The figure will be discovered from within the block by a methodical process of elimination, by sneaking up on it from all angles at once. A beautiful figure is buried in layer upon layer of clothing. The outer jackets are thick wool, the inner ones are silk. They are removed one at a time. I often alternate and take a layer off with power tools to get smooth, graceful contours, then I will carve the abraded texture away with chisel and blade and get a tooled surface.
The directions of my strokes with either set of tools is in the flow of energy that animates the gesture. After a considerable time, the figure within begins to emerge. It comes with its own personality or presence. As I approach very near to the figure within, I am using smaller tools. The power tools that suit this scale are carbide bits. I use ball-nosed and cone-shaped bits. For hand tools, I use a wood rasp, a spoke shave, a scorp; I also use Sure Form tools. I think of my carving tools as drawing tools. I draw the contours and the light and shadow of form. There is very little calculated technique or process I can describe. I work intuitively, my hands are busy, my senses alert, and I carve while I contemplate the great mysteries of the universe as the spirit of the sculpture emerges before my eyes.
Carving in the winter is of great advantage when carving a solid tree, as moisture freezes near the surface and does not move in or out. The wood is sealed as I work. There is no surface checking. I will get very close to the finished form before spring, when the activations of temperature and humidity will threaten the integrity of the piece. I will then need to control the drying process by covering, shading and sealing the wood.

I am searching for another large piece of burr oak for the other figure. I need a piece approximately four feet through by eight feet tall, preferably dead for some time. I am ready to begin working the two figures in relationship to each other. In the finishing and presentation of the wood, there are many unknowns. I took a risk in carving such a mass of solid wood. I will control the drying process as best I can and research and experiment with finishes. I hope to make a presentation of this figure sculpture at the Earth Day event in Readstown April 22, and I will update this blog again following that event.
My goal is to be ready to unveil the finished piece Earth Day 2012 and enjoy the process. Thank you for your interest and support.

- Alvin

Autumn Reflections

We've had a busy late summer / early fall season bringing the community supported public sculpture project to events to inform and engage the public. Alvin demonstrated woodcarving on the project at the Driftless Area Art Fair and Gays Mills Applefest and we had a presence at the Kickapoo Country Fair in La Farge and the Viroqua Harvest Festival.
The borrowed trailer has been returned, and Alvin is settling in for a winter of work on the sculpture. We are still looking for another piece of wood for the second figure, so please contact us (sunmoon@mwt.net) if you have some ideas where we might find a four-foot diameter trunk or half log of bur or white oak that's been dead a few years.

Alvin writes:
"It's Thanksgiving season. Grateful I am for the interest and support of individuals in our community that are enabling this project. My personal thanks go out to you.
It's an appropriate time for a progress report. As the seasons change, I am now free to carve. The block is now standing secured to a timber base, surrounded by three levels of scaffolding. The figure is emerging, the silhouette of the sculpture and model agree. From here through various tools and techniques I will remove layers of wood like taking off layers of clothes until the form is obvious, balanced, expressive. Both figures need to be at this stage together before final refinements. I work with power tools and mallet and chisel. I intend final refinements and finish to be hand tooled. At this stage I alternate between power and hand tools. I have just purchased an electric chainsaw and have made great progress in a short time. Standing in the shadow of the sculpture at sunset after a day's work, looking up, I realize the sculpture is reality As So Above and Below. No longer an idea or a drawing, but a work in process, a community co-creation sculpture with meaning, purpose to inspire noble thoughts of gratitude and right relations. So may it be. I am inspired and anticipating a productive winter with your interest and support. - Alvin"

Alvin to Speak at Beehive Earthday Fun-draiser Event

Alvin is scheduled to speak at the October 10th Beehive Collaborative Earthday Fun-draiser. Alvin is in the roughing out process with a major piece of 'As So Above and Below' and has been traveling around the Valley to exhibition the process. If you haven't seen him at work on this monumental sculpture, you surely won't want to miss this opportunity to do so.

Want to help further the cause? Right-click on our promo poster to save it to your desktop, then print a bunch and spread them around your hometown. We'd really like that!

A Block of Wood

Exciting news! Today we have acquired a big chunk of bur oak wood to use for creating the sculpture. This 4,000 pound half log was once a 150+ year-old tree living in the city of Darlington, Wisconsin.

Within the eleven and a half foot tall block, Alvin can see one of the two figures in the sculpture's design, the standing figure that is reaching to the sky. The search continues for another block holding the other figure that touches the earth, but for now, work has begun on preparing the block for carving.

First, Alvin is removing the pith, where tension is created that can lead to cracking and checking. This will NOT eliminate all danger of checking, but will greatly reduce this type of breach. Even though the tree was cut several years ago, some moisture still remains deep inside the block. As the moisture leaves the wood, this can also create cracking. Slowing this process allows tension to be released gradually and helps to maintain the integrity of the wood, so Alvin will be sealing the exposed end-grain and protecting the wood from too much direct sun.

Meanwhile, concealed in this massive chunk of bur oak, an inspiring form waits to be revealed.

Thank you so much to all of you who have made the contributions that enabled us to purchase this first block of wood, and thanks very much to Jack Knowles, who is loaning his flatbed trailer, and helped us to procure and transport the half log. Check out the video, soon to be posted here, of our trip to the studio of a local furniture maker (michaelalexanderdesigns.com) to load and transport the wood.

Good Times at KCF July 2010

We met some great folks at the Kickapoo Country Fair and perhaps we talked with you. It really feels like community when people come together to celebrate sustainability and good food. The excellent conversations with folks who stopped to look at our display for the sculpture project were fun and inspiring as more connections are made and word is beginning to get out about the proposal. Thanks for your recent donations, thanks to those who stopped to chat, and thanks to the Kickapoo Earth Day Committee who continue to support the concept of public art to express and broaden the environmental and spiritual consciousness of this community!
Research toward acquiring materials for the sculpture has begun . . . the search is on for quality wood.

The Kickapoo Community Art Fund is a project of the Kickapoo Cultural Exchange, a 501(c)(3) organization registered in the states of Wisconsin and Minnesota.

- Lila

And now a Blog....

Welcome to the Kickapoo Community Art Blog!

This blog was created to chronicle and support the efforts of Kickapoo Valley artists to infuse the landscapes of the watershed with large-scale public art installations which will inspire to create a universal connection and common ground among all creatures which call it home.

It begins with Alvin Felch's "As so Above and Below", a monumental white oak sculpture now in its pre-construction phase and seeking community support. Visit our Facebook Cause page for a summary of the project and links to donate to the cause. We're hoping this blog venue will not only serve to establish this first community sculpture but lead to more artists coming on board to follow Alvin's lead, spreading the movement and pushing it forward.

"“As so Above and Below” channels a conscience flow of communal intent, emanating from us, extending through the sculptural form and reaching out into the cosmos. We allow our imaginations to enter these surrogate shapes, grounded in our past, seeking the untenable revelation of the unknown above. Our communal impression will linger on in our cultural memory through the generations, magnified by the universal language of gesture.

These figures inspire noble yet humble thoughts and seek to elicit conversation. They celebrate our connection and our eternal conversation with this precious garden , love and quest for meaning, and where we continue our communion with the earth looking ever upward and outward toward our common future.

Let us imagine this sculpture together, until it exists, investing in it our collective intent; speaking as a community for all diverse communities in the Kickapoo watershed; beyond it to all communities of the Driftless; and further still to all communities struggling for that balance between what is enough for ourselves and what must be preserved so there is enough for our children’s children even unto the seventh generation and beyond."

Alvin Felch is a life-long artist by vocation, a designer craftsman by profession, a carver of wood and stone and an advocate for environmental ethics. Having lived closely with the land of the Kickapoo, Alvin has long intended to create art worthy of the public trust. It is with this singular sense of purpose that Alvin is pursuing this collaborative endeavor with the support of the community.

“These beautifully sculpted figures will be animated by our collective spirit, manifest in the landscape, in a place chosen as fully suited to communicate the connection among the land, the sky and those who come to bear witness. There are socio-economic benefits to supporting the arts that can’t be quantified by scientific or statistical means – the intangible value of a community’s identity, its image and its imagination. Monumental sculpture raises the intrinsic worth of place by communicating to visitors the value a community places on its public spaces. To witness one’s own clear sentiments and values embodied in monumental sculpture is ennobling, connecting us to the land that sustains us as we enter an uncertain future”

This is the mission of the Kickapoo Community Art Fund, established by the Kickapoo Cultural Exchange of Gays Mills, and begins with this sculpture.

Please join us in this endeavor and follow our cause on Facebook.