In North Dakota, September means winter is fast approaching. Being prepared may include having enough firewood to stay warm at home. For wood sculptor Barry Kutzer, rather than just burn the wood, he believes there is art inside of it waiting to be set free.
Picture a small log. Make it about a foot wide and half a foot thick. Now imagine that the log is a wizard, or a cowboy, or even a Viking. Finally, picture those figures in extreme, life-like detail. Barry Kutzer doesn’t just imagine it, he makes it happen.
“Just shaving off small chips of wood,” he says, as he works on his latest creation. It’s about a 10-inch long wood stump carved into the shape of a figureless human.
“As you can see on the face, I haven’t started putting in any facial features yet, but that’s probably what I will do next, and I would like this to be a Native American female figure,” Kutzer says.
Kutzer has many different types of metal gouges to carve detail into wood. “This is a number 2, and we’re just talking about the curve of the gouge,” he says. “The kind of footprint it will leave on a carving.”
The footprint Kutzer is referring to means how much it can dig into the wood
“Now this one will leave almost no footprint at all,” he says. “But if I use this one, you can see that it leaves a very distinct mark there.”
The best way to describe how Kutzer uses the gouge is that he is chipping out wood shavings from the log.
Barry Kutzer has created wood sculptures for over 16 years and currently works in a wood studio in Moorhead called In The Chips. Kutzer is now retired and he says he is glad he doesn’t have to depend on his art to make a living.
“If I had to live on my carving, it would be pretty grim,” he says. “People are not willing to pay a lot for wood carvings especially around here.”
Kutzer also says that there aren’t many artists like him.
“I think to it’s to a certain extent kind of a novelty. You see a lot of painters and graphic artists, but there aren’t too many wood carvers around that are doing this, or at least in a situation where people come in and watch.”
Kutzer is so passionate about carving he says he could go on for hours about it. So, how does he actually create his artwork?
“A lot of work,” he says.
It’s this meticulous precision that will be on full display during the studio crawl.
“If you’re looking for a hobby it’s a wonderful one,” Kutzer says. “Also I like to think to that wood carving is an art. It’s often thought of as kind a poor second cousin to the other art disciplines.”
Those who visit Kutzer’s studio will get to see him turn a chunk of wood into a life-like figure. The next time you stumble across a log, just remember, there could be art hiding in it.
This story has been part of a preview for the 2016 Studio Crawl put on by the Fargo-Moorhead Visual Artists. Barry Kutzer and other artists will open their studios to the public on October 1st and 2nd to showcase their art and how they create it.