A Resplendent Quetzal, Part Two
The bird--and the themes--emerge from the wood as the sculpture develops.
As I carved my piece of Savegre avocado wood (see part one in the Fall 2014 issue), I wasn’t exactly sure what tale I wanted to tell with the sculpture. At first I just wanted to concentrate on rough-shaping the quetzal as I remembered seeing it, perched on an overhanging snag in Costa Rica’s Savegre Valley. I thought a lot about how I wanted to present the bird. Simply recreating the female perched on the snag would be fairly easy, but I wanted to do something more dramatic and comprehensive. My days in the land of the quetzal had given me a chance to learn more about the species and forge an emotional connection with the bird. In this sculpture, I wanted to follow its life trail.
Because this would be a one-piece sculpture and require many, many hours of carving, I had to be extra careful from first cut to last. A single miscalculation or an incorrect tool cut could compromise the overall sculpture, or even ruin it.
Read the rest of this article in Wildfowl Carving Magazine’s Winter 2015 issue!
Read NextEastern Bluebird, Part One
