Curl Gordon: Art is in every piece of wood

You might not have seen his handiwork as you drove or rode by his workshop on Victoria Street, but tonight Curl Gordon gives News Five’s Karla Vernon a look at the inner workings of art … in wood.

Karla Vernon, Reporting
To an ordinary person, these are just pieces of wood. But to artist Curl Gordon, the possibility of art is in just about every twisted trunk or branch that comes his way. This afternoon,the veteran sculptor?s latest achievements were brought out of the dark workshop and into the sunlight where they stood larger than life and the artist himself. The piece he loves best depicts the Biblical struggle of Moses against the Pharaoh of Egypt. He calls it ?Testament.?

Curl Gordon, Sculptor
?Ever since back in those days, it?s like you are always running, somebody is always the head of something, you know, like the strong is always fighting the weak, or beating down the weak, somewhere along that line. So this is one of the reasons I stayed with that and I portrayed that in my work.?

These seven pieces represent three years of intense work. Gordon says he has been carving for over thirty years, since he was nineteen. Essentially self-taught, he now encourages young men who come by his studio to carve out their own dreams.

Curl Gordon, Sculptor
?It?s like there is a hunger, not hungry, but hunger to do something for themselves. And the fact that I am sure that a few of them look at me as a role model, that?s one of the reasons they are around me and I try to teach them and show them as much as I can. While I am working I explain to them what is, and what?s not. They stay with me and a few of them own their own carving shop presently and they are doing quite well for themselves.?

Gordon?s carvings are diverse in theme as well as shape. He says the wood generally leads him in the right direction, helping him to release the images within, or just go with the flow of the natural twists and turns of the tree itself.

Curl Gordon
?Basically, I just take it from the form of the wood. Sometimes the wood has a level of formation and it helps to carve what you might have in mind.?