A “Review of the Literature”- Stream of Consciousness – March 14, 2026

A few days ago, I republished an earlier post on how I carved a boat portrait of the Halibut Schooner Republic. It was one of my favorite small portraits because it was fun to carve, and I had enough data to make a credible portrait.

Ok, here comes the review of the literature part. I, seemingly endlessly, pursued a doctorate in anthropology at one point in my life. During those years, I might have written thousands of papers and made at least hundreds of presentations on various topics relating to anthropology. They all had a section that reviewed the relevant prior literature on the topic – sometimes ad nauseam – “as Smuckright stated in his groundbreaking exploration of the plutonic tautological implications of….” Yeah, that sort of stuff.

Well, you write that garbage for years, and see what it does to you. After I got released from the insane asylum, I got a job that required me to write press releases. I think I am now stuck somewhere in between the two modes. But the whole thing of writing the review of the literature still stuck to some degree, and in the post on the Republic, I run through the sorts of print and graphic material I found and how I used it. I think it relates to how you research and execute these types of projects, and it is a bit more compelling than just the breakdown on the carving.

Being a sailor, son of a sailor, and descendant of sailors, I am convinced that ships have something approaching an identity. So telling the story behind the portrait explains why I found it interesting and compelling to carve.

So next time you read one of my posts about some ship portrait and see me getting into the weeds, I mean surf, about its history, that’s why.

Here is the link to the post if you are interested: https://loucarrerascarver.com/2020/03/28/a-halibut-schooner/

I was conditioned by three universities to do it…It’s their fault!