The Collegian

Issue date: 1/21/10 Section: Arts

Media Credit: William Clayton

Bob Youngs doesn't look like an artist. He doesn't wear trendy clothes or live a glamorous life.

But, at age 48, the father of four and Saga, Inc. employee is an artist.

The walking-stick and model-carving Hillsdale resident boasts close to 40 walking sticks with Indian heads, birds, mushrooms, snakes and even a Cyclops to his carving collection.

From start to finish the self-taught artist said the process takes more than a year.

He cuts, dries and strips the wood himself. Hundreds of boughs lean up against pine trees in his backyard, in the process of drying.

He then picks a theme for his work either from imagination or by individual commissions from the community or across the country. Some of his favorite subjects are Indians with headdresses and the Cyclops he created last year.

A stick Youngs particularly likes was inspired by a hawk on the cover of a telephone booth.

"I just looked at it and started," Youngs said.

That creativity and inspiration doesn't sound that unusual for an artist but then again Youngs doesn't look like an artist.

He spent 24 years working in a factory, raising his now-adult children. Mustachioed and wearing an orange short-sleeved shirt despite several inches of snow outside, Youngs is soft-spoken and gentle. He enjoys explaining the thought he puts into his work.

For instance, the eyes in the walking sticks: he orders those eyes from a taxidermist. Usually they're replicas of bird eyes, but this one's a bobcat model, he explained, holding his work tenderly.
The hardest part of human faces?

"Getting the lips right," he said.

Youngs is slowly adding more complicated models to his collection at home.

He's already received offers to display work in two local art galleries.

Four or five years ago, however, Youngs wasn't carving at all.

Although he always enjoyed the hobby as a child, it was only recently that he rediscovered the craft, made considerably easier with invention of power tools.

Since then, it's become a dominant hobby in his life.

"It's just a passion that I like to create something out of nothing," he said. "I'm excited about what it's going to look like at the end."

At the end of carving the actual work, Youngs spreads a layer of polyurethane over it to seal it. Sometimes there are special additions to the pieces, too. Many of his walking sticks have a compass embedded on the top of them, while others can be taken apart to be shipped.

Continued...

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