 Hi, I'm Neil Lorenz and welcome to the 22nd annual Kettle Carvers, artistry and wood carving and show and competition. I'm amazed every year when I'm here to see the display of artistry and craftsmanship that these carvers have. And this year is no exception to that. We've got about 50 carvers here this year and I'll welcome you to come on in and see some of their work. We're in the town of Usper and we're here at the show here in Sheboygan Falls today and I'm very happy and fortunate to have done well. But this is a work, I would say, an effort of love. I just love to get a piece of wood in my hands and make a caricature of some sort or an animal, whichever seems to be in my mind that day. But this last project that I did here is the Walnut Birds, which did quite well today in the showing. We always have to show a piece that we've done in the past years. And that was one of my projects and there will be another one you'll see coming up soon with a little carpenter looking down the board. He also was a new project for this year. I've done multiple jobs or pieces. I like Norman Rockwell. If I can get a hold of him, I will do the him. And sometimes I see a magazine cover I like. I can't refuse to put it in wood some way. It just becomes an enjoyable hobby. I've been carving since 1994. I've gone through a few seminars, found out what to try to learn as I was going from the instructors. There's wonderful instructors out there. I belong to the Kettle Carvers Club and we do meet every month in Plymouth at the Generation Center. We share thoughts and bounce ideas off of each other. It's a wonderful project. It's always very enjoyable. If you have some time, come on down. We'll show you how. It's always a pleasure to have another person carve. Yes, my name is Herman Sporleder and I'm from Manitowoc, Wisconsin. I do a lot of relief carving for the most part. The one that he has right now is irises with a leaf background and leaves around the outside. I primarily do farm scenes and some fishing scenes. I have a snake in the back with a cross on top, which is a sign of Jesus. Around the bottom it says Christ shall cross the head of the serpent. I have vases that I turn on the lathe and then I carve out the flowers and I color them with chalk. Then they have an acrylic over the top of them. I also like to play around with dragons. I have two dragons here right now. One is a green fiery and the other one is called the beast. He's kind of a fiery looking guy, too. I also do flowers in the round. This is an hibiscus with some morning glories around the outside. The vases turn from a white birch out of my yard. I also have an urn. They keep teasing me that I'm going to be buried in that urn. It's turned out of basswood and wood burned and leaves on it. It's just a beautiful piece. I also have a relief carving on the end with flowers, sunflowers. I call it summer flowers. Very pretty. A lot of chalks and a lot of acrylic paint is used on that. It has a walnut frame. A Santa Claus up on top and an eagle. A sign of America and our strength. I also have a nativity set in the center which, again, talks about our Christianity. The one on the top on the side with the hands is called saving shavings. It's turned out of butternut and basswood and then the savings I stuck inside to indicate saving them. Just a little fun piece. Sunflowers are next and they're all natural with a wood burned background. Kind of a simple, easier piece to do. The one on the end is just a tree sweeping over the countryside with the leaves on it. I enjoy carving a great deal and I advise anybody who has any interest to come on down, take a look at the stuff that's here and maybe get involved. It's a very enjoyable, relaxing thing to do. Thank you very much. This is a dragon that I've carved. He's made out of basswood painted with acrylics and standing on a volcano a little bit. I have probably about four, maybe 500 hours worth of work in that particular piece. We have Samuel Clements as the bust and he's done out of butternut. And we have a little elephant. This is called a caricature, in other words, a crazy thing and some wood burning on there. I use all acrylic paints. I have my bull rider. The name of this particular carving is 7.7 seconds. As everybody knows, 8 seconds is the time you have to stay on and he might make it or he might not. We haven't figured that one out yet. This is Albert Einstein and I started carving that wood. It's basswood. It was a log and I started carving it while it was still kind of wet. I had it mostly carved and all of a sudden he started cracking and cracking. So I had it almost done. So I finished him up and then it was suggested to me that I should name him so we named him what was he thinking. The brain is too big for his head. This is a black bear. He's scratching his back on that log. The name of this piece is Ecstasy. I do a lot of deeper hairlines. I like the texture. I'm all into texture. I try to get texture on almost all of my carvings. This is Mr. Einstein also. Only this is a glued up piece so he doesn't split. And I'm not sure which one I like best. This one I've had a lot of trouble with getting the finish the way I want it. That's about all I have. It becomes a heart. Our pictures are in there. Our pictures are in there. Now you watch the pivot points. See where that pivots? That disappears. And that's called a Lucianist's Heart. It took me a year to build it. And after that I made a penny that I made. Should I show you the penny? It is cut out with a saw blade that is 5,000 thick. About three times as thick as your hair. I have to hold it with two fingers in order to cut it out. It's a 1927 penny. It's my wife's birthday. I cut this out of aluminum square with an owl. The eyes are 10,000 in diameter. And the saw blade is 5,000 thick again. Then I have a bottle with the insides all put together in the bottle. And there's a yolk up on top so it doesn't come out. The mushrooms that we see here I carved the tops out of cedar fence poles. I should actually say I turned them out of that. I carved the mushroom houses and the little fairy that's on there too. I used rice paper to make her wings. And the ground and the texture that's on the bottom of the base is coffee grounds and red tea leaves that we use to do the texture with that. And then next to that is a turtle scene. And it's a little box turtle and he's having lunch. And it's an early morning forest scene along with the water and leaves that are down in the water where he's taking a bite out of a mushroom. Along with that you also probably see an angle worm that's on top of next to him in that water scene. And another carving that I have is a little saw-wet owl. This owl here she's carved out of basswood and painted with acrylic paints with that. And I've got her mowed on a piece of driftwood bark that I found that I have there. I also do some character carving. A little gentleman that we see here. I guess I call him Tom Selleck because I watch Blue Bloods occasionally on TV. And he kind of looks like Tom Selleck. We winter in Florida so while I was down there I did carve a bunch of these items that you see on the table. Along with that also there are cottonwood bark carvings that I have here. All different types of, some are light houses, some are little gnome houses. And we have a little bit of everything covered in here. And this here is a little wood duck hen that's in her nest sitting in that house in cottonwood bark. Which was carved by my brother-in-law Dan Casey. So we're really enjoying the show here. We're having a great time and meeting with a lot of the folks here. So it's been a real pleasure to come here to Sheboygan Falls. This is a hooded MacAnser, Drake. Then we've got a northern shoveler hen. This is a shore bird. Then we've got this bird, a chickadee. Then we've got a canvas-backed Drake, a Baltimore Oriole, a Downey woodpecker, and a canvas-backed hen. It's all been carved by myself and Terry Dones. We do power carving. And then we use acrylic for painting. I do instruct. I've got three people coming over to my place. I do instructions of carving, things like this. And we're from the Sussex area. My name is Ron Ingan. And the gentleman that sits at the other table is Terry Dones. And he's from Dellafield. He enjoyed this show, a really great show here they've got. And we'll be back here next year, too. My name is Peggy Nelson. I'm here at the show in Sheboygan Falls. And this is my second year here. I do wood-burning, or pyrography it's called. And I've been doing it for about a little over two years. I got involved in it. My dad was a carver for 15-some years. And he did wood-burning. And he passed away two and a half years ago. And my mom was going through his room cleaning out stuff. And I told her to give me the wood burner. I was going to take a swing at it. And that was two years ago January. And I've been doing it since. Thank you. 154 boards that make up the windows, the handrails, the buildings in this piece of cottonwood bark. There's 34 trees, 11 stairways, 111 steps. There's two swimming pools in here. Should I turn it? There's two swimming pools in here. 14 balconies, two church bellies. How long did I take you to make this? This was 700 plus hours. And I used, I make most of my tools I had to make out of springs, fishing hooks, needles to carve this piece. I carved all sides of it, including the bottom. It is whimsical, meaning you have stuff in there that's there, but it doesn't make any sense being there. It's crooked. That's part of being whimsical. And where are you from, sir? Where are you from? Jamesville Bluitt, Clinton, Wisconsin, in the Jamesville Bluitt Carving Club with the Rock River Carving Group down there. That's a barn owl catching a rat. I did the barn owl because I like the coloration. I like the feet on it. I like the wing spread. And I like to do them in action shots. So we're catching him going to dinner here. And it's set on a piece of barn wood with some straw on it. And then it has a wooden base. And it's suspended by an iron rod so that it allows me to put it in that particular position. I don't have to worry about it getting lost, getting bent, breaking, things like that. That specimen there is a road runner and a healer monster. When I was working in Arizona, I would see quite a few of the road runners and occasionally a healer monster. And I like the feathers on the road runner. I like the coloration on the healer monster. And to get them in confrontation, I thought I would put some hatching eggs in there. And it gives a little life to the scene. And I put it on a base that's made to look like sand with a cactus in the back because they are desert animals. The cactus, I like the flowers especially. So I spent some time putting those on there. I enjoy doing that. And that's a decoy. It's a pin-tail duck. I like the way the feathers go on that particular bird, so that's why I picked that. And then there's some songbirds here. And just ones that I liked, put them in different positions, mounted them, and basically a lot of people do songbirds. The big red-tailed hawk on the end and the rattlesnake was a video that I came across on the internet. And I liked both the bird and I liked the interaction there, so I made that into a diorama, gave it a scene to go on to. And that's probably the piece that people comment on the most. And carving is just kind of fun to do. It gives you a lot of peace and quiet. You get to make things that you like. You get to be in control of the situation, and you can do about whatever you want. Hello. This is an example of intaglio relief carving. It's a style that is found on pyramids. It's a type that I've found that I enjoy and I teach this. I find a pattern, I put it on the board, stop cut, and use the board to do my framing for me. It's carved into the wood. I use acrylic paints with minwax stain, which gives me a stain where I can put multi-colors on and mix them together for stain and shadows. And I've been doing this for about four years now with this style and been having a lot of fun with it. So I'm from Wisconsin Rapids. Been going all around teaching and going to other shows and just enjoying myself. This year's featured carver is Willard van Sloes from Plymouth. Willard, you've been carving for how long? About 13 years. We'd like to have you talk about some of your carvings that you have here. Let's start with this bluegill right here. Well, this was a bluegill that was carved in a class that I took up in Chilton through the Fox Valley Technical School. Bill Wright was the instructor, and he taught us the process of carving the fish and also the process of painting to get the coloring and the effect of the live fish look. Is that a piece of driftwood or what is the base that you're using? That's a burl from a tree that was finished off and cleaned up and polished. And I thought it looked like a good item to use for the display of the fish. And then I carved the lily pads to insert into it. Adds a lot of depth by doing that. Well, thank you. I see you're doing some bark carvings and you've got a duck that's partially started. Yeah, those are projects that are in the works to try to get completed in the future. What type of duck is that? It looks like he's sleeping. It's a mallard, a drake mallard, and it's something that I haven't ever done before, but I want to create the feathers and wood-burn the feathers to make it look like a real duck and do the painting later on. I see in the background here that you've done a fair amount of relief carving. Looks like you must enjoy that. Why don't you tell us a little bit about getting the proper depth? Well, it's all in the illusion of making it look deep by creating shadowing and putting items in front of one another and taking into consideration the horizon in some of the landscaping that will go along with it. And the others is just coloring and layering of the details of the parts some of the carvings that I've done were classes that I've taken from other instructors. This one here is a new carving, isn't it? Yeah, this is an Emmett Kelly carving that I've taken through the Fox Valley Tech School in Chilton. There again it's shallow or a relief carving and get the illusion of depth by creating angles and shadows and the color of the painting.