Wanderings of a Wayward Woodcarver

Stories from a Life in Wood

Gerry Holzman

• Publisher: Linden Publishing
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9780062976659, 9781501188985
• eBook ISBN: 9781610354011
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Artist Monographs

Charming, humorous, sometimes tragic, and always fascinating vignettes from a life spent in craftmanship.

They say life is a merry-go-round—for Gerry Holzman, this has been literally and figuratively true. A master figure carver who has restored over 100 pieces of antique carousel art, created 250 pieces of original carousel carving, and was the head carver and executive director of New York's landmark Empire State Carousel Project, Holzman has devoted the past 50 years to woodcarving, and his skill has taken him around the world as a student, teacher, craftsman, and artist. Throughout this giddy merry-go-round of a career, he has encountered many intriguing ways to use our brief time on earth and invites us to accompany him as he strives to understand and appreciate them all.

Wanderings of a Wayward Woodcarver is Holzman’s record of a lifetime spent in the craft and the many lessons it has taught him about what it means to be a carver and what it means to be a human being, plus a recounting of the many memorable characters he has met along the way.

From master carver Gino Masero, who taught Holzman much about carving, life, creativity, and decency, to Holzman’s students who touched his life deeply, to a sign carver who could not read, a witch who invited Holzman to visit her coven, and the mafioso who showed Holzman how to prevent his carvings from being stolen, Wanderings of a Wayward Woodcarver shows how a life in craft is the perfect viewpoint to see the whole of the human condition.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword By Liam Stegman
• Preface
• Introduction: The Sounds of Carving
• But First—a Caution to Potential Critics
• In the Beginning
• A Face in the Woods
• “Are You an Artist?”
• The Past Is Present
• The Last Woodcarver
• Friendly Hands
• The Elevenses Were Brilliant
• Baseball Bats and Carving Mallets
• Full Circle
• An Eight-Year-Old Kibitzer
• The Boundaries of Bargaining
• A Perfect Bargain
• A Valuable Volkswagen
• Passing It On
• The Woodcarver Who Couldn’t Carve Wood
• The Ballad of the Bread-Knife
• The World According to Joe Romano
• Diogenes Does Brooklyn
• Bobby or Bullshitter?
• How the Devil Do You Carve a Ship’s Figurehead?
• Strangers on the Deck
• “I Shudda Gone to Saskatchewan”
• Of Mice and Men—and Woodcarvers
• Breakfast with Charley
• Here Come the Judge
• “Tell Me, Mr. Judge …”
• An Emerging American Primitive
• Felix and Oscar
• The Captain and the Carver
• Splendiferous Carvings that Never Were
• Take It or Leaf It
• The Man Who Loved Too Much
• Mon Frère En Bois
• It Ain’t Over till It’s Over
• How to Be an Artist
• Creativity
• Why?
• The Woodcarver and the Winemaker
• Boids by Marshall
• There Are Many Roads to Rome
• Another Way?
• Always Listen to the Little Man
• Barter
• The Headless Horse of the Hamptons
• “Hi Gerry … and How Are You Feeling Today?”
• “Sometimes We Get Lunch”
• They Came to the Carousel
• The Beheading of John Philip Sousa
• Upstate Is Another Country
• The Wayward Press
• Honesty Is a Sometimes Thing
• Window Chopping
• Me and Dick Nixon
• A Not-So-Wicked Witch
• Solvitur Ambulando
• The Persistence of Nat Gutman
• A Thread that Binds
• A Blessing from the Butcher
• Epilogue
• Index
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Back Cover