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CAT

I was at my booth at a boat show in Maryland when another maritime carver came to visit. Lordan was the local “yaahd cavaah,” as we’d describe it in New England. We hit off right away, talking about the little niceties of our trade. Somewhere along the line, he asked if I would be willing to make a swap. ” I know that you teach carving, and I also do. I’ve found that if I teach the students to carve the word CAT, they get a complete guide to letter carving in one word. It has the verticals, horizontals, curves, and diagonals all in one word.” We continued talking about letter carving for a while. In the days before Robo carving stole that end of our market, we tended to do a good bit of hand-carved quarter boards, transoms, and banners. After a while, I admitted that this was going to be useful to my students, and I asked him what he wanted in exchange. ” You carve a lovely little compass rose design. I’d love to borrow it for just a few boxes for presents.” “Done.” Says I, and the deal was complete.
Over the years, I used CAT to instruct many in letter carving. By the time they master CAT, the student is ready to move along to carving a quarter board.
So, the CAT carving was supposed to be a practice piece. But I noticed more than one student carefully finishing off the CAT practice piece as a finished piece of work. At last, confirmation came in the mail of what I had suspected. There, in all its glory, was the photo of a cat happily eating dinner in front of it’s very nicely varnished and gold-leafed CAT carving.
One man’s practice piece is another’s kitty gift,

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Smooth

About twenty years ago, I gifted some early works to interested friends and family. I had withdrawn them from use at the shows because my work methods had changed. They weren’t bad, I had moved on and they no longer reflected current work.

I’ve always preferred cherry for my mast hoop portraits. Cherry is durable, has beautiful grain that gives you sky and water, and lends itself well to detailed carving. A principal difference that cropped up as my methods matured was how I carved or didn’t carve water and skies on the portraits.
Early on, I attempted to carve ripple and wave patterns in the water, and similar effects in the sky. Eventually, I decided that I’d let the wood do the work, and avoid the tool marks. That I changed my techniques was a matter of personal evolution. The portraits didn’t sell any better or worse for the change, and none of my clients commented on it. But (let’s run the laugh track here), if in a century a collector of my work was to write a critical article on evolutionary trend in my style, they might wonder at the “early” versus “late” Carreras – you can groan now. It was just that I came to appreciate the smooth over the textured. For those of you who are artists and craftspeople, you can probably pinpoint similar moments when something changed for you.
I am not a super fan of Bob Dylan, but a line from one of his songs has always summed it up for me: ” He not busy being born is busy dying.” Grow, change, keep being born.

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Share

Share; be generous.
It began with my mentor pointing out my stinginess. I had little money for presents, but he countered that I had my craft: “Give it away; it will come back to you.” I ignored his advice. No, it wasn’t a miserable holiday. People were generous to me. Eventually, it began to sink in that he was correct. But for years, I was not creating and had little to give. So like many of us, I bought for others.
When I re-established the business in the early ’90s, I created lists of things I needed to improve on before opening my business – right at the top was lettering.
I’ve always needed to link learning with meaningful work – so I planned projects that targeted lettering proficiency but would then become presents. The photo shows two examples. I made signs and other carved projects for a long list of nieces, nephews, sons, and daughters of friends, and of course, my kids. By Christmas, I had mastered all the serifs, ascenders, and descenders needed and made a lot of people happy. Cost? Almost nothing. I used odd cuts of wood; the only expenses had been for paint, glitter, and varnish.
My present to myself was a gift of increased skills and sharing the happiness I had created.
As I write this, I am planning some new products; the spring is always my most productive time for new things. That means it’s a product development and gift planning time. Need free product development advice; give a gift and ask: ” Terry, these boxes are something I’m developing. I’d love to get your input on them.”
Dare I say it! Do good while doing well? Try it; making someone happy is an excellent use for a craft skill.

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Fast

There is only about a week between the little Dutchman’s Breeches and the Trout Lilly. Its Spring in New England and time gets compressed. One day the Maples are flowering and making me sneeze. Then the next, I see the tree is full of small leaves.

  • Dutchman’s Breeches

  • Trout Lilly

I walk around every morning. My Bloodroot blossoms are almost gone by, but my Goldenseal is beginning. New England spring is not extravagant. Miss something today, and it’ll be a year before you see it again. Don’t waste time; Spring is fast.

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Create

We so often admire the complex and then seek out and appreciate the simple. The examples I have chosen to show are small carvings from post-war occupied Japan. Both feature a popular theme in Japanese art; Mount Fuji.
The simplicity of the creative technique is central here. The entire subject gets rendered with no more than the bare required cuts, and for that matter, the bare number of tools. Although the artist makes multiple cuts, the amount is minimal. We can also see this at work in brush calligraphy techniques where the subject is composed and executed in one continuous stroke.


To be effective in this requires two things: a thorough knowledge of the capabilities of your tools; and mastery of your tools. As one of my senseis says, “and that’s all there is to it.”
One mentor of mine once knocked out about a foot and a half of fancy molding out of what was scrap wood. He cut all the cuts needed from one tool, moved on to the next, and so on in succession—the complexity of the finished piece derived from the repetitive simple cuts he made in the correct sequence.
Well, I don’t know about you, but I can tell you that I am still working on this, and probably will be until it’s time to put away my tools. Like so many creative endeavors mastering the complex depends on learning the very basic.

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Reality

In the early 1970’s I was cobbling together an education while working any available job. My options were slender, I had some limited GI Bill money, and whatever I could earn to pay rent, and tuition. There was no scholarship money or family assistance. For two and a half years, I paid tuition semester by semester taking short term loans and paying them off by the end of the term. This story takes place in that period.

As a result of my financial wants, I worked a wide variety of day jobs so I could finish my first two years of college at night. I worked as a surgical technician for several years, but being on night call began to conflict with evening classes. Instead, I fell into the habit of working for various temp agencies as an aide and orderly. One has affected my views on reality for years.
I have no trouble differentiating fact from delusion. But one gentleman I worked with did. Working with him, I came to realize that we may not always share a standardized view of reality.
First, I need you to understand that this was the early 1970’s. I don’t think the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s per se existed yet, and standards of care or treatment we have today did not exist.

The Doc was a retired surgeon, and the family was confident I’d be perfect for him. With my background in the operating room, I’d understand his perspective on life. The Doc was mid-seventies when I met him, and sometimes, he was still actively practicing medicine; in his mind. It would be six-thirty in the morning, and Doc would be scrubbing for his case at seven. He’d think I was his resident or technician and be asking me for the patient’s X-rays or lab work. The problem was the Doc hadn’t been very kind to those who worked for him. So, as his resident, or tech, I frequently received a rash of his sarcasm, disdain, and general abuse.
The Doc also had free and unfettered access to the entire house and liqueur cabinet. Drinking didn’t help.
I really needed the money. At the time, my cat and I were living in a loft behind the old Schraft’s building in Charlestown. Trust me, this was not a quality environment. So, if the Doc wanted to scream at me a bit, it was OK if I could study while he was doing it. This went on for a couple of months before his daughters suggested that I engage the Doc a bit more. Their suggestion was that rather than let him rant that I could use my knowledge of the Operating Room to conduct guided hallucinations for him. The real motivation was that Doc was living with them, and when they came home, he was still full of vim and vigor while all they wanted to do was watch television after a long day. The first suggestion was that I move in to provide 24-hour care, but I pointed out that I was interested in finishing a degree, not becoming a 24-hour daycare provider. So the guided hallucination idea came about.
The daughters suggested that the Doc really loved his old neighborhood in Dorchester, the church he attended as a boy, his family, and his surgical practice. Concentrate on getting him to tell you all about those. I nixed the idea of the surgical practice; I’d already seen how he treated his residents and techs. So it was the old neighborhood.

Living in Boston, I had a general knowledge of the area where he had grown up, but not what it had been like when he was a youth. So, I engaged him in telling me stories of what his childhood had been like. Over a few months, he covered the years of being an altar boy up to his first girlfriend and him in the rectory. He had filled me in so thoroughly that I knew just when to cue a positive memory. His daughters remained unsatisfied, though, because his vivid recall continued into the evening hours. I was growing uncomfortable with the situation; I felt that one hell of an ignorant young fool, me, was sinking into deep waters better trod by a therapist.
Let me add here that for generations, the males of my family had been under the influence of a French or Catalan Christian mystic who believed in communication beyond the veil. As I’ve said, I have not had trouble separating fact from fancy. But in line with my father and uncle’s experiences, I’ve seen one or two things that have given me pause and caused me to look twice or three times. The Doc was to assist me in participating in my first really transgressive experience.

That afternoon the Doc had been in the liquor cabinet, we’d had a bad morning in the operating room, and I had pulled an all-nighter studying for a final exam. In Psychic terms, the boundaries were down. The Doc and I walked over to the front door. He stood in the doorway with me just to one side and behind him. For about the thousandth time, he began describing the setting of the street in front of his old church. I just watched bleary-eyed as the image took on clarity, began to firm up. I watched with horror as the Doc told me he was going home and started to exit the doorway towards the church that we both could now see in detail. I began to howl for him to stop, I pulled him back, and I willed my eyes closed more out of fear that he’d take me with him than that he’d actually cross over himself. Somehow I snapped him out of it, but it was worse because he began a sad moan that could not be stopped.
I tried to explain to the daughters that evening why I could not return. They didn’t understand. I not only feared for their father, but I feared for myself too.

He pitched over on his lawn less than a week later. He’d been trying to cross the street. About two years later, I found myself driving past the church. It was one of those that the Archdiocese had scheduled to close. I was happy that he made it home before that happened.

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Cruise Ship Puritan

We are are not who we appear. Amazingly, it was another anthropologist who forced the moment. He moonfaced asked me, “Who are your People?” In my less civilized incarnation in the ’60s, I’d have shown him by the tip of my boot. But I was now in the Ivy League. So, I made an honest attempt to explain. I was a typical New Yorker – a melding of peoples and cultures. In my case, a mix of Catalan Spanish, Hungarian, Irish, Scots, and Caribean all mixed in that beautiful stew pot we called New York City. “Well, yes, but who are your People?” 

Some people can’t deal with complexity.

Casting about for a way out of the discussion, I looked at him and did some creative confabulation.

” I’m Hispano-Yankee. It’s an obscure group. Our ancestors were blown off course from the Armada and eventually wound up on the coast of Maine, where we promptly started breeding with Native Americans and English fisher folk who preceded the Mayflower. My People preceded your People.” With a lift to my chin, I shifted my gaze over his right shoulder and ignored him. Five points for a correctly performed Ivy League Cut!

Little did I know at that juncture that part of the story was curiously close to the truth. I discovered that the same company that sent the Mayflower sent a second ship – the Seaflower. The Seaflower went south to the Caribean. The Mayflower crew were busy being Puritans and talking about Cities on a Hill. But, the Seaflower folks were opting for a good time on the beach, growing tobacco, and going buccaneering. Letters exist between the Providence Island “Puritans” ( snort, laugh!) and Governor Winthrop’s son inviting him down for a fun cruise raiding Spanish shipping, towns, and other fun mayhem. While the Colony on Massachusetts Bay became, well, the term Puritanical comes to mind, the cousins to the south began to reveal a casual cruise ship attitude towards life.

So. Yes. I am not as I appear. My ancestors originated the Caribbean holiday cruise for wayward northerners. Celebrate good times!

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Pyrates and Emeralds

Family –

Seamen stand in ranks of generations behind me on both the paternal and maternal sides. My father’s maritime ancestors were all merchant mariners. But, growing up, nothing was said about my mother’s family, and the one time she slipped a reference to them, she rapidly put a cover on it and denied having ever told me that story. The story, said to me at about age five, was that an ancestor had hung for piracy. Kids of five don’t forget these things when they get raised on whole rafts of sea stories and pirate movies. But, my mother firmly stomped on any inquiry about her family, and it wasn’t until I was an adult that I dared to ask about it again. In the intervening years, her attitude had only hardened: “That never happened, and you stop poking around!”

Mythology-

My mother’s preferred family mythology was that she was an heiress to rich emerald mines in Colombia. As soon as the lawyers sorted things out, we’d all be wealthy beyond belief. This bit of fabulism regularly got trotted out at holidays and family gatherings. 

My father, the romantic pragmatist, knew the whole actual history of his father’s heart condition, the loss of wealth during the depression, and his first jobs as a longshoreman, and then as a merchant mariner. My father either didn’t know, didn’t care, or more likely was cowed by my mother into accepting the blank slate offered regarding her family. He tolerated the popular mythology of the emerald mines.

She had been orphaned at eight and brought to this country by her brother/ stepfather ( another merchant mariner). He rapidly stepped out of her life, leaving her with a string of non-relatives. The experience of being a poor orphan boarding with a strict landlady had not been pleasant. That was not the narrative mother wanted to discuss – End of discussion, let’s talk about the emeralds!

History –

That was where my mother’s story stood up until about ten years ago. Ten years ago, I got nosy. You know, the internet. The internet did not have much on the little speck of rock in the Caribbean that she was from. Just enough. ” You stop that!” I persisted.

Eventually, I found that there were two origin myths on the island regarding her family. Both have bits of tantalizingly historical detail. In the first, I found the original male progenitor had been a mate on one of Henry Morgan’s ships. Morgan left to give Panama a thorough sorting out, but his mate either stayed or returned to it later. He left a long line of descendants. 

OK, Morgan was a privateer on a technicality, but still a pyrate. 

In the second story, the stem ancestor descended from a Napoleonic War Privateer named Berelski. He deserted from Napoleon’s efforts to control the Caribbean. Knowing that someone named Berelski would stand out, he took an English name. Berelski was a technically a privateer, probably a Pyrate.

Mother’s reaction to this? “You stop this, now.”

So, for the time being, I have stopped. All my shipmates and classmates from school now have ample opportunity to say: ” Yup, the Dread Pyrate Wesley.”

Louis N. Carreras, Woodcarver

Authentic Nautical Accessories, and Custom Furnishings

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