Teaching, Promoting, & Sharing Woodcarving Arts in Marion County
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY:
The Whetstone Woodcarvers’ Club is a decades-old fixture of the folk/traditional/cultural arts community in Marion County. Drawing together wood carvers, whittlers, & others working directly in wood from the tri-county area, the Whetstone Woodcarvers’ Club provides tools, training, exchange, companionship, & opportunities for sales & exhibition through monthly meetings in the Auditorium of the Marion County Historical Society’s Heritage Hall. As a true community arts organization, the Club provided a kit of beginner tools & graded learning projects to anyone who may show up to a meeting interested in the fine art of woodcarving.
On any given meeting day, the club draws together between a dozen and twenty diverse members, all of whom gather together for encouragement, gossip, & skill-sharing as they work on and provide friendly feedback & any assistance on each others’ latest projects. Each member has their own “beat”: some carve intricate figures for nativity scenes; some carve wooden heads & limbs for cloth-bodied dolls; some carve miniature wooden pocket-knives, custom pet brooches, low-relief wood sculpture-paintings, or community caricatures in relief. While members usually work on their own projects, once a year, members come together to produce pieces for sale in an annual fundraiser & club show, to help support the club’s rent at Heritage Hall, its passel of loaner toolkits, and other collective equipment and supplies for the group. The Club also supplies, for loan, many back-issues of Chip Chat: a beloved national woodcarvers’ interest magazine, with patterns & ideas galore!
The Whetstone Woodcarvers’ Club welcomes new members of any skill level or persuasion, and would love to see you (whenever COVID-19 allows it!) at their next meet-up event! Keep carving!
SHOP // ADDRESS:
The Whetstone Woodcarvers’ Club meets in the Community Auditorium at the ground level of Heritage Hall, home of the Marion County Historical Society: 169 E. Church Street || Marion, Ohio || 43302
CONTACT:
Contact the Marion Voices Folklife + Oral History Project to be put into direct contact with Whetstone Woodcarvers’ Club leadership, or for more information on how to get involved!
SERVICES:
Artmaking community; custom/bespoke wood pieces; informal or formal woodcarving lessons; beginning woodcarving toolkits (to be used on-site at Whetstone Woodcarvers’ Club meetings)
GENRES:
Material culture — wood carving
PHOTO GALLERY:
