Along the Way: Club members carve out a place in Green Valley

There is a pleasing harmony in the blade of a knife and a chunk of wood held in clever, caring hands. It’s not at all unlike a musician guiding a bow across the strings of a fiddle.

Making music and amazing art objects with their scalpels on a Monday morning at the Friends In Deed building, 301 W. Camino Casa Verde, are members of the Green Valley Woodcarvers organization.

Gathered around a large, circular table, they are sculpting, slivering and gouging various projects while simultaneously solving the problems of the world.

Don Moberg, the group’s president, acknowledges it’s “probably Green Valley’s spit ‘n’ whittle club.”

These artists are skilled at pulling your leg, too.

“My brother said the only reason I learned to whittle was, I wanted to spit in public,” said Sherie Goade.

She and her husband Glen are among some 39 members of the woodcarvers.

“When you sit down with a carver,” Sherie said, “get ready to listen and learn. Carvers are anxious to share everything they know.”

And, indeed, they seem to be as interested in a friend’s project as their own.

The Green Valley group has been organized for about 25 years. They meet on Mondays from about 8:15 a.m. until 11 a.m. Ages range from 50-ish to 80-ish.

“I’m 52,” Laura Greenfield volunteers. She just joined in December, with a background in pastels and drawing. “It’s quite a challenge to go to three-dimensional art,” she says.

Laura, a fan of the sport, is whittling a basketball player from a piece of butternut, 8 or 10 inches in length. Most of the carvers use bass wood.

In a joint project some time back, the Green Valley Woodcarvers produced a diorama of a frontier town, a scenic representation including buildings, townsfolk and a drunken cowboy. It has been on display at the Creative Coyote in Tubac, but club members would like

to exhibit the miniature village here, perhaps in a bank or other business or civic building.

A local exhibit of the frontier town, it is hoped, would interest Green Valley residents — female or male — in joining.

Another stunning bit of collaborative artwork is a wooden “quilt” which is framed and on the wall at the Friends In Deed building. Various members carved the relief on a couple dozen wooden squares.

They whittle for themselves, mostly, and for family.

Betty Greeley was working on a “rough-out,” a partially carved figure. “You can buy the rough-out and detail it,” she said. “Or you can start from scratch with a block of wood and just do it yourself.”

However one chooses to go about whittling, this group would agree to a person, it’s a satisfying and relaxing hobby.

And it’s not limited to wood carving, believe it or not.

“See this?” asks Moberg, holding up a small sculpture of a human face. “This is a sweet potato.

It was three or four times this size when I bought it at Safeway. A sweet potato has the “spirit” of wood. You can carve it and it will harden. I took the potato, peeled it and hung it up to dry for a few

months. As the potato dries, it takes on a special character all its own.

“You can carve anything,” Moberg says, “as long as it’s not harder than your knife.”

What about people who might have a touch of arthritis, or whose fingers don’t quite bend the way they used to?

“You can adapt, you can make tools friendlier to your hands,” Sherie Goade says.

Moberg holds up a 3 1/2-inch Winchester pocketknife with a 1 1/2 inch blade and says, “This is all you really need.” He has a tool box, as do the other members, with all sorts of gouges, blades, mini-chisels and “V” shaped instruments.

Getting started, Moberg says, is not too expensive. Kits for carving and strops for sharpening blades can be purchased at arts and crafts stores. “I bought the pocketknife at Target for $5,” Moberg said.

Dick Lilja is carving a figure of an English bobby, a policeman, from bass wood. He has been a whittler for three or four years. “I’m from Corvallis, Ore.,” he said, “and I had an instructor there who said that in wood carving, you ‘take away,’ you reduce the volume

of what you’re working on. In other art, you add to it.”

Lilja said he’s learned much from the Green Valley Woodcarvers. “One thing is, you can soften the wood and carve it better by spraying it occasionally with water or alcohol.”

Glen Greeley suggests using Jim Beam. . . except you might run out more quickly than if you use water.”

Being whittlers, naturally, they discourse on many subjects while at work. “This is a good way to get rid of your aggression,” suggests Andy Wurtzel. “But most of my artwork winds up in our fireplace.’

Wurtzel adds one more bit of wisdom: “The Woodcarvers group is the safest place in Green Valley — everybody’s carrying a knife.”

Chuck LaNoue, wearing a green ball cap in honor of St. Patrick’s Day, suggests, “You know, this political situation is getting sickening.” Lilja agrees, adding, “Seems to me we have to do something to

improve the whole system.”

Of the 39 members in the Green Valley Woodcarvers, Moberg says some are “seasonals,” who’re here only a few months.

On the second Saturday of each month, the group goes to the Voyager facility in Tucson to carve with about 40 or 50 other whittlers.

There are no dues, no initiation charge and no greens fees (as in golf), but the group donates $1 each to give to the Friends In Deed organization for use of a room.

“It’s a lot of fun and there are some really nice people involved in the woodcarvers,” Sherie Goade says.

And don’t let her kid you — there really is no spitting. Well, not inside the building.

Corky Simpson, former Tucson Citizen columnists, writes a weekly commentary for the Green Valley News.