Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 21, 1990 TAG: 9007210073
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHRIS GLADDEN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
He compares it to a spiritual awakening, one that diverted him from a career in sales into the art of woodcarving.
Today, Chrisman makes his living as a nature sculptor. He turns chunks of basswood into lifelike birds with a variety of wood-sculpting tools, his father's Barlow knife and tubes of acrylic paint.
Chrisman says his former career in sales "was like swimming upstream. It didn't fit me. I've always had a love of nature and an affinity for the outdoors. I became bored with watching TV and reading books. One day, I picked up a 2-by-4 and a pocket knife and started carving animals."
Shortly afterward, Chrisman spied a pair of cardinals at his bird feeder and carved their likenesses with the pocket knife that belonged to his father. More birds followed until Chrisman became a full-time carver 10 years ago.
Today, his basement shop is lined with ribbons won at various wildlife art shows.
Despite their number, they don't represent all of the honors Chrisman has won because he gives the customers who buy award-winning birds the ribbons that go with them.
"People love ribbons, but I'm not all that enchanted with them anymore," Chrisman says.
However, ribbons played an important part in his early career.
"I couldn't have done this without the love and support of a wonderful person called Rennie," Chrisman says. Rennie, Chrisman's wife, accompanied him to art shows in those early days.
"After I won a ribbon or two, she asked me: `When are you going to do this full time?' So we decided to jump the Grand Canyon," says Chrisman, characteristically taking a metaphor from nature.
Since that life-changing leap, Chrisman has seen little slack time. About 30 of his pieces are included in the Grandfather Mountain Nature Museum in North Carolina. He exhibits his art in about six shows a year, including the Wildlife Arts Festival today at the Science Museum of Western Virginia in downtown Roanoke.
His carvings routinely sell for hundreds of dollars with some going for $1,000 and more. A current project will put him into the five-figure 3 1 CARVER Carver range. A New York collector has commissioned Chrisman to sculpt in wood a life-size bald eagle. Chrisman has spent six months gathering research material on bald eagles and psyching himself up for the two-year job.
Previously, his most ambitious project was a life-size Canada goose that took three months to complete.
"I got tired of looking that goose in the eye," the 55-year-old artist says.
Before he embarks on a work, Chrisman studies pictures of the bird he intends to sculpt, as well as stuffed birds called study skins that the biology department at Virginia Tech lends him and, preferably, the bird in the wild.
"Part of my discipline is to have them anatomically correct," he says. "I try to combine the disciplines of ornithology, sculpture and painting."
Then he draws a pattern on a piece of yellow cardboard and traces around it on a block of wood. He cuts the wood silhouette out with a band saw and then reaches for his carving tools.
The details of the carvings are intricate, each feather carefully delineated. After the wood carving is completed, Chrisman moves to another area of his workshop where dozens of brushes and tubes of paint await.
A small carving will take 2 1/2 days.
"I like to work slow and comfortably and do quality," he says. Though Chrisman takes as his subject the vast array of birds in North America, sculpting birds whose habitats range from the shore to the desert, he sticks mainly to species found in Western Virginia.
"I was persuaded early on to do birds I see in my own backyard," he notes.
That advice resulted in dramatic consequences in at least one incident.
"I had two turtle doves I kept as pets in a cage in the back yard," Chrisman recalls.
"One day I went out to feed them and found them dead."
Chrisman stood there wondering what could have killed his pets when he glanced at the top of the spacious cage and saw a large, red screech owl glaring at him.
"He turned, puffed himself up and made that threatening, clicking sound with his beak. It was hard to decide who was threatening whom," the artist recalls.
The owl had entered the cage through a tear in the chicken wire but couldn't exit the same way. Chrisman held the disgruntled owl captive for a few days, studying it for a sculpture, and then released it.
Today, the carving is in Chrisman's living room.
"I experienced him, he experienced me, and we went our separate ways," Chrisman says.
The Wildlife Arts Festival will include displays of carvings, paintings, baskets, pottery, jewelry and stained glass by about 40 artists and craftsmen, along with demonstrations and sales. Puppet shows will be presented at 10:30 a.m. and 1 p.m and a lecture on wildlife photography at 2 p.m. Lectures on Project WILD, a program to preserve wetlands, will be at 11:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. Appalachian storytelling is scheduled for 3:30 p.m.
WILDLIFE ARTS FESTIVAL: Today, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Science Museum of Western Virginia, Center in the Square. Exhibit $3, puppet shows $4.75. 342-5710.
by CNB