Greenstockings
The story behind the carving

December 1994

I was living in Whistler B.C., Canada, working as a mason in construction, when I received a phone call from an Andrew Hammond in Yellowknife N.W.T. After introducing himself, he started to talk about his project. Andrew had just returned from an art school in Montreal with a four and a half ton piece of Laurentian pink granite.

He further explained that he wanted to transform it into a life-size female figure and that he needed help with it. Initially, Andrew enrolled into art school for the purpose of learning how to carve three dimensional stone sculpture.  Unfortunately, he fell short of arriving at his goal. His instructor was not able to teach him the skills he needed. In summation, he said, "I'm still lacking the technical and theoretical abilities and I'm running very thin on my budget." He wanted to obtain my services as a carver and instructor for one week.

In that time he was expecting to be taught the methods and tool applications required to complete his sculpture. One week is not enough time to teach this subject to a beginner in its required depth. I cautioned him in respect to his goal and made sure he understood that theory alone would not finish his project, but I was not going to discourage him since this was an opportunity to get back into serious carving again.

The date for my departure was set for January, 1995. I used my first day in Yellowknife to familiarize myself with the project and assess the situation. Andrew's objective was to have a life-like depiction of a pregnant Cree woman. I expected to work from a fully developed clay model of the sculpture. I had forgotten that Andrew had mentioned his lack of theoretical knowledge.

I was surprised when I discovered a model that was poorly developed and incomplete. I quickly realized that I would need to develop the design as well as work on the technical aspects of this project. All in one short week! I needed an expedient way of creating a northern Cree face. There was no time for modeling sessions, so I began by striking up casual conversations with locals in restaurants and bars, memorizing facial features wherever they caught my eye. During the daytime I was carving from memory and sketches. By the end of that week I had left Andrew with a face of a northern Cree woman.

Andrew stayed in touch after my departure, calling me with technical questions and reporting his progress. However, Andrew felt the true weight of such an ambitious endeavor. Early in the spring of 1996 he called me back to Yellowknife to continue work on the sculpture. I arrived in the beginning of May the same year, this time under more favorable circumstances. Being able to sculpt with open garage doors without the exposure to the bitter cold of the northern winter really made work a lot easier!

Andrew proved that he understood the concepts he learned the previous winter by completing the gross reduction by 80 %. I was left with doing the detail work on the hands and face and the remaining 20% of the gross reduction. To this day Andrew employed me for a total of seven weeks of instructing and carving. He put in two weeks of his own labor. I estimate three more weeks of full time studio work to complete the sculpture.