Richard Witham works for Facilities Management at USM, where he is a carpenter. He spends his days on campus doing finish work, building cabinets, countertops and doing maintenance. He is also a self-taught wood carver who makes intricate wildlife sculptures. I caught up with Witham in the carpentry shop last Tuesday. As he unpacked some of his pieces from a box filled with pink Styrofoam, I gasped in amazement as he pulled out a small tiger.
“I worked for 500 hours on this one,” he said. The tiger he held was less than a foot long and no more than five inches high with the attached base. Witham carved the tiger from a piece of Tupelo, which he described as lightweight wood which is relatively easy to carve. He starts by sketching a pattern from a photograph, then cuts the wood into a rough shape using a bandsaw. From there, using rasps, chisels and assorted rough edged, shaped files, he removes bits of the wood as he refines the shape. Witham uses a burning tool to carve the details of matted fur and tiger face. The colorations are produced by applying 21 coats of watercolor paint over the sculpture. “If you use paint directly out of the can, it will clog the pores in the wood,” Witham said, “By using several layers of watercolor, I can gradually build up a color on the surface without covering up any of the details in the carving.”
Witham does most of his carving at his home in Gray, where he lives with his wife. He also takes his pieces with him when he goes camping, “I took an egret I was working on up to Moxie Pond. I spent three days working on it.”
Witham belongs to the Maine Wood Carvers Association, the New England Wood Carvers Association and the National Wood Carvers Association. He recently decided to enter wood carving competitions after a ten-year hiatus. At the State of Maine Sportsman’s Show last March, Witham entered three carvings into the wildlife category and took home two ribbons. At the 2004 Downeast Woodcarving and Wildlife Art Show, Witham entered 5 pieces in the “open division” and took 5 ribbons. Witham enters in the more competitive “open division” because he will be considered a “Master Woodcarver” if he takes home 2 more ribbons in that class. Witham says that competition in the open division is fierce. “Some people put in 1500 hours on a single piece.”
The Best of Show at this year’s Sportsman’s event was taken by a sculptor who had carved a piece of roadkill.
“They had carved out a piece of road with a smashed bird on it.” Witham said. “To compete for Best of Show, I’d have to put 2000 hours into a piece. The question is, do I want to work on one sculpture for several months?” Witham seems to enjoy the competitions and said that they give everyone involved a chance to appreciate the techniques employed by the other carvers. He also gets ideas, “I saw one that had moss and a whole bunch of individual rocks glued to the base.”
Witham has donated two of his works to USM. He gave a whale tail to the Bio-Science Research Institute and a loon he carved can be seen in the Unum-Provident Great Reading Room in the Glickman Library.
Witham is currently working on a very grand, very time-consuming sculpture. He is collecting piano keys from turn of the century pianos and using iridescent elements in their mallets to build the tail of a mahogany peacock.