Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 5, 1990 TAG: 9005040372
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-6 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: KATHIE DICKENSON SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: RADFORD LENGTH: Medium
To most people who see his carvings, the labels won't matter. They will be too busy enjoying them, just as the people of Carpenter's hometown of Waverly, in Southside Virginia, enjoyed them for more than a half-century.
Without knowing anything about Carpenter, you can't help but imagine him when you view his work. Rural tradition is evident in his carvings of animals and produce. But there is more - a sly, almost irreverent sense of humor in many pieces. A little boy relieving himself at a fence is surprised when he is caught by the early bird. Adam and Eve ride on the back of a grinning, two-headed serpent, while a pitchfork-carrying devil peeks from behind the serpent's tail.
Also apparent in the whimsicality of the pieces is the pleasure Carpenter took simply in working with wood. Most pieces are brightly painted or decorated with items of clothing and bits of fur; some have moving parts.
Although it is clear that thought and planning went into each carving, it also is clear that a spontaneous response to an event or to the piece of wood itself - a response manifested in the tools and materials that Carpenter, a lumberman, knew best.
Looking at "Anteater with a Belly Full of Ants," you can picture Carpenter's eyes slowly lighting up as he turned over a scrappy piece of log with a bulge in the middle. Even the carvings that show sensitivity to more serious issues - "Wounded Knee Indian," for example - reveal a spontaneously ironic way of viewing things.
Carpenter's autobiography, published by the American Folk Art Co. in 1982 - three years before his death - confirms many of the impressions made by his carvings. The anecdotes he chooses to share reveal his satisfaction with the everyday, the essential. He recounts childhood near-accidents; he tells about working with his brothers in their father's sawmill business; he talks about his first car, ordered from Sears, and the escapades in it.
He carries us conversationally through his life of nearly a century and inoffensively reintroduces us to the values of our grandparents: Work is essential but pleasurable; thrift and innovation are necessary to success.
His attitude toward his art reflects those practical, basic values. He considered his pieces effective advertising for his ice and produce business. Carving took time, he said, when business was slow, and it kept him from dwelling too much on his loneliness after his wife died.
But for all his practicality, he derived great pleasure from his work and from the fact that others enjoyed it. If he was sometimes surprised that people wanted to buy or Carpenter exhibit his carvings, he also was delighted by it.
"My work is not fancy," he said. "It is more of a hit or miss. If people like it, it's a hit. If they don't, it's a miss."
Since 1972 his work has been exhibited in places as far away as Brooklyn and Tokyo, and as close to home as Richmond.
Thirty-one pieces from two major Carpenter collections are on display at Radford University's Flossie Martin Gallery through May 23. The exhibit includes samples of his carvings dated from the 1940s through the 1980s.
The gallery is on the Radford University campus. Hours are Monday-Friday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; Sunday, noon-4 p.m.
by CNB