Creative Woodworks & crafts 1999-11, страница 38

Bunn understands the widespread need for instructional guidance of this caliber.

"For someone first starting out as a beginner, its difficult for them to find placcs to study like this," said Bunn. "This was his (Denike's) way of filling that void."

Though Bunn, Hoist, and all of the instructors at the school emphasize creativity and individuality, all beginning carvers arc required to complete a compulsory lesson. During this introduction to carving, the novice is taught how to properly use and care for the various carving tools they will be working with while moving through a series of three projects.

Each step provides students with a foundation of traditional skills that will support them throughout their carving career. Beginning with knife carving, then advancing to relief carving, and finally dabbling in three-dimensional figure carving, the student prepares himself to handle the toughest challenge: his own imagination.

Cynthia Griffenkranz began attending classes at the school five years ago primarily to coax her father, who has been afflicted with post-polio syndrome, to attend as well.

"Well, 1 always wanted to do this," she said. "I learned here and have been carving ever since."

Cynthia will be starting her first commissioned piece, a butterfly, after she finishes her current project, the Matadore, which she has been working on for 18 months.

"1 actually had to make a clay sculpture of this first, which I didn't know how to do, so I've definitely come a long way since I began carving."

Many of the more advanced students at the school are working on projects that first need to be sculpted. The school hosts weekly classes in clay sculpture taught by Dana Parlier, a professional artist from New York.

"We're hoping we can expand that as well," said Bunn. ''He is outstanding."

Like their predecessor, Bunn and Hoist are dedicated to providing then students with the opportunity to study with the finest of professional carvers. Aside from the owners themselves, students learn from such talented carvers as Jerry Cetrulo and Bill Fainglas. The school often hosts seminars and workshops taught by John Burke, Jeff Pharcs, Debbie Edwards, and David Sabol on a variety of subjects ranging from "Carving a Civil

Creative Woodworks & Crafts

In a time when carving had taken a back seat to many other forms of woodworking, a local carver took the necessary first steps in laying the groundwork for a learning institute that would later grow into one of Way n e, Ne w Jersey's most priceless assets: The American Woodcarving School.

The school's founder, Mike Den ike, was frustrated with the limited classes available on woodcarving in the area, and dissatisfied with: the quality of those given in adult education programs. D'efiike's vision was to provide a forum for the advancement of woodcarving skills that would encourage artists to exjilore their own interests. In 1974, Denike establish exf C A me r i c a n Woodcarving School, and created'a'--ciEfil6^%ithin the New Jersey woodworking community tha't%.;Sjil%^ong-ly felt today. So strongly, in fact, that rnanV callers fiom New York, Connecticut, and even Vermont tfavel h^Urs just to attend a three-hour class.

"I traveled from New York through a raging snowstorm that closed the entire coast to take a class here once," confessed Francis Celentano. "I wound up staying at a local hotel for the night but, it was worth it." Francis has been commuting 40 miles one-way to The American Woodcarving School for eight years. She takes advantage of the school's clay sculpture classes and has begun to design her own carvings.

The school, now owned and operated by Denike's former apprentices Eric Bunn and Mike Hoist, does not segregate its students according to ability. The school philosophy is that each student should be able to choose their own projects and work at their own pace under the guidance (not leadership) of a professional carver. This formal enables the less skilled students to leam from the more advanced carvers as they progress.

Having been a student at the school for nine years,

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