El­speth Dun­can

Wood­en carv­ings (of­ten of hu­man faces and fig­ures, steel pans and lo­cal flo­ra and fau­na) are a com­mon sight in To­ba­go.

Sold large­ly at road­sides, on beach­es or in small stalls in pop­u­lat­ed ar­eas, these cre­ations are so plen­ti­ful that it is easy for the av­er­age per­son to take them for grant­ed and un­der­es­ti­mate the skill and pas­sion re­quired to pro­duce them.Re­cent­ly, while clean­ing and sort­ing through box­es, I came across a wood carv­ing set giv­en to me by my fa­ther some time last year.

Im­me­di­ate­ly a strong de­sire to be­gin carv­ing sparked in me. Pre­vi­ous at­tempts were in child­hood.A small elec­tric gui­tar, of which I was very proud, was the most mem­o­rable re­sult of my wood carv­ing ef­forts.

On Google and YouTube I dis­cov­ered var­i­ous ar­ti­cles and videos on carv­ing and the art of whit­tling–the lat­ter in­volv­ing use of a small, sharp knife to grad­u­al­ly shave and cut fig­ures from raw wood.I en­vi­sioned my­self sit­ting out­doors in qui­et mo­ments, at one with na­ture, "whit­tling" away.

Lat­er that morn­ing on the beach I picked up two in­ter­est­ing-look­ing pieces of drift­wood. The one that re­sem­bled a bird was the one that I start­ed whit­tling as soon as I got home.I do not own a whit­tling knife and, un­able to find one in hard­wares (where the word "whit­tling" was un­known to those I asked), I used my Swiss Army knife.

Lat­er that evening, I sat with friends hav­ing drinks and eats. Look­ing up at the walls of the venue I no­ticed wood carv­ings cre­at­ed by Collins An­drews-Tou­s­saint of One Love Arts (Booth No 1) in Store Bay.

I had seen these carv­ings many times be­fore, but that night I viewed them through new eyes. I no­ticed the depth of de­tail–the scaly ap­pear­ance of a mer­maid's tail, the smooth curve of a body, the tex­ture of hair, the "swish" of wood carved to look like fab­ric–and I won­dered: "How did he do that?"

Through carv­ing and whit­tling, one can speak a new lan­guage, pulling sto­ries out of grain and re­turn­ing life to what now seems "dead" (wood) but was once liv­ing (a tree). As wood­work is one of my fa­ther's hob­bies, I grew up with this aware­ness, but did not ever ful­ly put it in­to prac­tice my­self.

Every Fri­day evening when I teach yo­ga in the Kari­wak ajoupa, a ma­jes­tic, de­tailed wood sculp­ture of the Egypt­ian God­dess Hathor stands be­hind me. She is the cre­ation of Omesh Cain, To­ba­go-born, Ger­many-based sculp­tor and artist. I know that the next time I see Hathor, I will ex­am­ine her form and fea­tures with cu­ri­ous "how-did-he-do-that?" eyes.

Hun­gry to un­der­stand more about the art form, I vis­it­ed Booth No 1 in Store Bay. Lere­lynne An­drews-Tou­s­saint (wife of Collins) greet­ed me with a hug and out­side of their One Love Arts booth. In­side, Collins sat carv­ing a piece of cedar.

Hear­ing of my in­ter­est in learn­ing to carve, he in­vit­ed me in and demon­strat­ed some ba­sic cuts with the heavy-du­ty X-Ac­to blade he us­es a lot in his work. It is fas­ci­nat­ing that such a sim­ple tool can be used to cre­ate in­tri­cate wood­en won­ders.I hap­pened to have the be­gin­nings of my whit­tled drift­wood bird with me.

In my eyes, it was a chick­en...to Lere­lynne, a sea­horse..to Collins, a pel­i­can. In one piece of wood, the pos­si­bil­i­ties are end­less.One Love Arts will be of­fer­ing wood-carv­ing and jew­el­ry-mak­ing work­shops lat­er this year.

Please con­tact Collins and Lere­lynne at 794-5818 for more in­for­ma­tion.