Hello fellow carvers, my name is Steve and I have a carving addiction. I can't help look at an animal and wonder what its bone would be like to carve. I want to learn, and try everything, so that I might create something worthwhile.
Ever since carving totem sticks with my Dad around the camp fire I have dabbled with carving. Progressing with a pocket knife, and a little practice at times, to be a competent whittler. I was only just recently introduced to bone carving while spending the last year traveling New Zealand. My wife is on exchange for teacher's college at Canterbury University in Christchurch and I came along for the adventure. As a mid-year intake we had over two months during summer to travel the islands. We bought a van and traveled to the North Island where a long-time friend from Canada (Graham) was working as a raft guide on the Mohaka River. Graham introduced me to another raft guide nick named Bones, a thin elderly Maori, who lived on the edge of the resort, in a small hut he made himself. Bones is the kind of guy who makes me look forward to getting older. He showed me his carvings, but being of modest means I couldn't offer a fair price (eventually we made a mutually beneficial trade). He was eager to share his tools and knowledge in order to allow me to make my own piece. He also gave me a piece of Pounamu I am very excited to carve, understanding the importance of such a gift. Bones shared all sorts of stories of Maori lore from the Hawkes Bay region as well as his own experiences with NZ's gang scene. Having spent several years in the regular force infantry I have a profound respect for the Maori warrior spirit, while having traveled the world has revealed their craftsmanship equal to all those great cultures of antiquity. Marylin, another elderly Maori also encouraged my interest in her culture by sharing her stories, and taking me to significant historical sites like Te Kooti's lookout, Tataraakina and the local Marae, as well as lending me books on Maori culture and art. I spent time on a sheep station with the Tahoe family, a rodeo family, who's lineage follows a Maori warrior responsible for a mass grave of British soldiers between Napier and Taupo. I have attempted to absorb as much as I can before returning to Canada, but know that I will continue carving for the rest of my life and find it fitting that such a culture would have inspired me to this pursuit.
This is my very first bone carving, I made it with the hope one day I may catch something other than my shirt with it.
This is a couple of pieces Bones made for a wedding.
sunrise over Te Waka in the Mohaka valley.
Human life is a natural extension of the universal creative force. Suffering is caused by the resistance of consciousness to experience aspects of its own being. Love is complete acceptance, letting go to be enveloped, the more you use it, the more there is, inexhaustible, infinite, the mother of all things. The Universe is ruled by cycles, the ancients knew this, and that their mastery has yet to be matched, I am excited for the future.
Help
Posted 18 June 2009 - 03:09 AM
