Wednesday, August 20, 2008 9:34 PM CDT
Wood warrior: delivery man carves a new hobby out of wood
By TONY REID, Staff Writer
Trust the FedEx man to deliver what you want.
Lloyd Elson drives a FedEx Express truck by day, dropping off everything from cell phones to medicines. When he finally delivers himself home to Effingham and the shakes drain out of his road-warrior fingers, Elson snatches up a small knife with a bent blade and buries his heart into the art of cutting pictures into wood.
“Some people use a little V-shaped gouge to do what I do,” he explains, a hint of pride underscoring his words. “But this is more old school; each line is actually two cuts in the form of a V.”
He thinks it’s better that way, and you can’t argue with the results. His images, sliced into woods ranging from pine to bass wood and aspen, are so extraordinarily detailed they look like drawings etched on dark parchment.
Elson also has a good eye for the kind of pretty pictures people like and cuts loose with a steady stream of them: a beautiful horse caught in profile, an isolated mountain church or perhaps a faded and forgotten classic car now up to its axles in country weeds. He also carves mythological beasts, prancing deer and a basket of flowers, in which every strand of the basket qualifies as its own work of art.
And fairies, too, (the kind you find at the bottom of the garden) who aren’t his personal cup of tea but a nod to his wife, Denise, and daughter, Erica Hansen, who are rather keen on them. From wherever the inspiration comes, Elson’s joy is transmuting the design into wood via the intensive ministrations of that little, glittery-bladed knife.
“I’ll be sitting out back carving, and Denise will come out and say, ‘Are you going to eat?’ And I’ll go, ‘Why, what time is it?’ and she’ll say, ‘3 p.m. — you’ve been out here since 8 a.m.’” says Elson, 49. “I get so engrossed it’s like a complete disassociation from the world.”
He sells at fairs and special events and, with prices ranging from $10 to $60, is lucky if he’s making $1 an hour on his many journeys through the wood grain. Money, however, isn’t the destination.
“Every carving I do is a different challenge,” he says. “And I love the challenge.”
He talks like he’s being doing this for years and his art, with every tiny line picked out with cleverly applied wood stain, looks like the product of a skill learned over a lifetime.
But, hooked by watching a friend of his dad carve, Elson didn’t set out in pursuit of creativity until Jan. 1, after daughter Erica bought him the knife and a couple of how-to books for Christmas.
She wasn’t surprised, though, that her dad turned out to be a natural. “If he puts his mind to something, he excels at it,” she says. “He’s always been like that.”
Elson’s wife then points out that his former passion, before it got too expensive, used to be showing border terriers, and he once had the dog ranked at No. 5 in the nation.
“Lloyd wouldn’t let the groomer groom the dogs, he always had to do it,” she says. “He’s a perfectionist, and he would hand-strip them.”
Hand-stripping means plucking out the offending untidy hairs by hand, one by one.
“That would take me maybe five hours,” says Elson, who looks a little embarrassed.
Carving has proven a cheaper pastime and a little less intense. But the deliveryman with an eye for detail won’t leave the sharpening of his knife to anyone else and insists on doing it himself, achieving a razor-edge of exactness.
He’s also happy to apply his zealous sharpening skills to the scissors wielded by his daughter, who owns “Erica’s Hair & Nail Salon” in Effingham but, in this case, perfection can have its drawbacks.
“He over-sharpened my scissors, and I nearly cut my finger in half,” she recalls with a smile for her dad. “I had to go to the emergency room.”
Contact Tony Reid at treid@herald-review.com or 421-7977.
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