The Mystic Carvers Club hosted a three day seminar with three Caricature Carvers of America members over the Memorial Day weekend.  It is called a  CCA Carve-A-Long  East for carvers living in the Northeast. It was held at the  beautiful W. Alton Jones environmental camp of the University of Rhode Island.   Students rotate among the three instructor for a one day class with each instructor.  This year the instructors were Mitch Cartledge of North Carolina, Bruce Henn of Ohio and Don Mertz of Ohio.

The class I taught was the A-B-C’s of Face carving with a choice of subjects between a shelf squatter, a bust or an egg noggin.  As part of the instruction the “Three Version Face Stick” was central to learning about opening up a block of wood to carve a face.  Using only a knife to make slicing cuts each student learned a new appreciation for the knife as a carving tool.  A one day class is always intense with so much to learn in such a small amount of time that goes so fast and yet each student survived.

This is a picture of Saturday’s Survivor Students that include: Denis Blais, Michel Blais, Fred Dielman, Ed Ertel, Bernard Feinerman, Ernest Hill, Robert Landry, Robert Soderhold and Sumner Stone.

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This is a picture of Sunday’s Survivor Students that include: Scott Arsenault, Rick Boyer, William Bucceri, Loyd D. Clark, Jr, Gary Filiault, Edsel Johnson, Frank Kaczynski, Fred Krafton, Christine Krafton, Robert O. Martel and Sam Talbot.

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This is a picture of Monday’s Survivor Students that include: Bob Ahrens, Chet Blay, Art Carrano, George Elliott, Joe Marshall, Robert Schmeichel and Nancy Swiniarski.

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The next series of photographs are by Robert Schmeichel showing scenes of class sessions and the three instructors.

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Thanks to Bob Landry, who chaired the seminar and the fine people of Mystic Carvers and the carvers of New England for a super three day carving seminar with  good memories to help us along the journey into carving friendships.