Ron Kelly: Forest Artisan

I have an old logger friend here in Northwest Montana who missed his calling. He should have been a philosopher. We were rumbling down a dusty backcountry road in his pickup one day a few years ago when, out of a clear blue he said something I've never forgotten "People love wood, you know. It's the stumps they hate."

I think he is right, but wood is so commonplace in our lives that we never think about it - unless the wood we're holding in our hands happens to be a work of art; which brings me to my friend Ron Kelley, a big time artist who can do things with ordinary pieces of wood that simply astonish me.

Ron has been my barber since the early 1970s. One day a few years ago I noticed what first looked like a painting hanging on the wall in his shop. It was of an elk standing on a ridgeline between some trees, but it seemed to have another dimension to it which told me it wasn't any ordinary painting. I'd never seen anything quite like it.

"What's this?" I asked.

"It's my new hobby," he answered.

Some hobby, I thought, as I looked more closely at what on closer examination appeared to be a multi-colored jig-saw puzzle made of wood.

"It's called Intarsia," he explained.

I was to later learn that "Intarsia" is derived from the Latin verb "interserere," which means, "to insert"....as in inserting hundreds of small pieces of exotic hardwood together so they form what looks like a wood engraving. It's really beautiful when done by someone with great artistic ability - and Ron certainly has the talent in spades.

Although woodworking - gilding, painting, graving and carving - dates to ancient Egypt, imperial Rome, Persia and eighth-century Japan, historians agree that Intarsia got its start in Siena, the cradle of Italian wood carving and inlaying in the thirteenth century. At one time, there were 34 Intarsia shops in Florence. Much of the early work featured street scenes and architectural subjects.

In its original form, Intarsia artisans sunk forms into wood, following a prearranged design, and then filled in the hollows with pieces of different colored wood. Art historians thus classified the work as "sectile" [fragments of wood or other material were inserted in the wood surface] or "pictorial" [the wood pieces formed a picture].

But Ron has taken the ancient art of Intarsia to a whole new level, creating beautiful artworks from hundreds of pieces of wood, which he fits together so tightly that their edges are defined, not by their seams, but by the natural color of the 78-80 wood species he often uses in a single piece.

Although you'd ever guess it, Intarsia art is not painted, so the accuracy of each piece Ron does depends on his ability to buy wood species whose natural colors are the colors he needs: browns, reds, whites, greens, yellows and blue. Yup, there are blue woods - and the stuff costs about $100 a foot in stores that carry exotic hardwoods imported from Africa and South America. There is even a wood that changes color in the sunlight - from tobacco brown to dark green. Ron uses it mainly in the wings of mallard ducks and pheasants.

Ron got his first big break a few years ago when he was invited to show some of his wildlife pieces [they're stunning] at the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation's annual show in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He was later invited to display his talents at a big Safari Club convention in Las Vegas. Three yeas ago, I took several pieces to the annual Pacific Logging Congress charity auction in Scottsdale, Arizona. They sold out in less than 20 minutes. No one was more astonished than Ron. Now he displays his work at both the Oregon and the Intermountain logging conferences.

Although Ron got his start in wildlife - mountain goats, elk, deer, bears, lions, antelope, giraffe's and elephants - I've encouraged him to explore the history of logging in the western United States. Again, the work is gorgeous - and no two pieces are alike. Counting the pencil sketches from which he works, a single Intarsia piece can take 300 or more hours to complete.

Some of Ron's more recent pieces are below. I think you'll be very impressed. If you'd like pricing information, send me an e-mail at editor@evergreenmagazine.com

 

Thanks,

Jim Petersen
Co-founder and Executive Director, the non-profit Evergreen Foundation