Edward J. ‘Joe’ Haviland III
A wood sculptor known for large, rough-hewn pieces carved with chainsaw was Butler resident
Edward J. “Joe” Haviland III, a noted wood sculptor known for his large roughhewn pieces fashioned with a chainsaw from logs he found in the woods, died Dec. 31 from respiratory failure at Sinai Hospital. The Butler resident was 68.
“I’ve known Joe for a long time, and he was a real character and always had a little bit of mischief going on about him,” said Rodney Carroll, a well-known Baltimore sculptor.
“He was a person who found himself carving wood and he was like a Celtic shaman. The wood spoke for him and he found lots of female figures in wood,” Mr. Carroll said. “He had a special relationship with wood, and when he finished a piece, he’d keep on rubbing it. He didn’t want to give it up. He was a very sensitive man and his work had a sense of scale, and what he did, he loved, and he got a lot out of it. That’s what doing artwork is.”
Edward Joseph Haviland III, son of Edward J. Haviland Jr., a Social Security Administration lawyer, and his wife, Ann La Rue Beeler Haviland, a homemaker, was born in Towson and raised on West Joppa Road.
A 1970 graduate of Towson High School, Mr. Haviland, who was known as “Joe” and never used his first name, was a 1970 graduate of Towson High School and attended what are now Loyola University Maryland and Towson University.
While attending Towson University, he met and fell in love with the former Helene Phelps, whom he married in 1975. “I was taking graduate credits in ceramics at Towson University when he helped me with firing my pieces,” she wrote in an email profile of her husband.
Shortly after the couple married, they purchased a townhouse on Biddle Street, and Mr. Haviland’s skills as a wood sculptor and cabinetmaker and in ceramic tile work came in handy during a renovation that took a 11 years to complete.
“Most people would just start slapping things up to begin with. But Joe’s a craftsman,” Ms. Haviland told The Sunday Sun Magazine in a 1988 interview. “He does everything to perfection.”
“I’ve never done anything for the house that I wouldn’t live with myself for the rest of my life,” Mr. Haviland said in the interview.
One of the first things Mr. Haviland did after moving into the couple’s home was to build a huge stone wall with an arched door.
“It is there that he built a wall of Belgian paving blocks that still stands today,” Ms. Haviland wrote in the email. “He noticed the city was jackhammering up a road and destroying them, so he loaded 600 of them — 75 at a time — in his International Travelall truck and built this wall. He cut the stones for the arch and because they were so hard, he had to sharpen his saw every day. He got the capstones from a quarry in Delta, Pennsylvania.”
After selling the house in 1988, the couple lived in Hampstead, Carroll County, for two years, before purchasing a 2-acre piece of land in Baltimore County with a log cabin and a barn that dated to the 1800s. Once again, they embarked on a renovation.
He later built a home while the barn became his sculpture studio and “man cave,” Ms. Haviland, a freelance camera operator, said in a telephone interview, and the log cabin became her office.
“Joe was probably my oldest and dearest friend in Baltimore,” Jimmy Rouse, a wellknown artist, wrote in an email. “We met in the 1970s when we were both renovating houses on the eastern edge of Mount Vernon. As artists and friends, we existed on the same wavelength.”
Mr. Haviland held a variety of jobs, including working for Maryland Mosaic Tile. He also worked as a gardener and landscaper for Augustine H. “Humpy” Stump Jr., an insurance executive who had been president of Stump, Harvey & Cook Inc., and his wife, Louise, who lived on a 15-acre farm near Reisterstown.
“From Louise Stump, he learned how to grow amazing asparagus and put in 60 plants which are still producing after 25 years,” Ms. Haviland wrote.
But it was the art of sculpting that came to define his life. Mr. Haviland began sculpting wood in 1974 after returning from a trip to Italy, and the large pieces he sculpted with a chainsaw from logs he found in the woods or were given to him by friends, were inspired by his friendship with Raoul Hague, the “reclusive wood sculptor who left New York City in 1943 and moved to an upstate cabin in Woodstock, New York, where he worked for the next 50 years until his death in 1993 at the age of 88,” reported The Baltimore Sun in 2003.
Beginning in 1976 and continuing for the next 15 years, Mr. Haviland visited the artist, always in the autumn.
“I introduced the promising young artist, Joe Haviland, to the great American wood sculptor Raoul Hague,” Raoul Middleman, the noted Baltimore painter, wrote in an email.
“They both hit it off as a mutually fond relationship. Joe and Helene would visit his cabin in Woodstock, (I believe that Helene would give him haircuts on the visits there) and Raoul would visit them in Baltimore,” Mr. Middleman wrote. “As an acolyte to the elder artist, it seemed that Joe in his work easily found his voice after that, his innate lyricism in carving wood balanced with a certain pragmatic discipline that gave endless satisfaction to those who enjoyed his work.”
Mr. Middleman added: “Joe’s keen sense of humor kept him grounded as an artist, so that his sculptures of creativity never lapsed into paroxysms of sentimentality. His art was always poised between freedom and control.”
Major exhibitions of his work were held in Baltimore at Y: Gallery & Fine Arts, Resurgam Gallery, Creative Alliance and Sasha’s 57 Cafe. Two pieces that were purchased by the Hyatt Regency are on permanent display at the Inner Harbor hotel.
“Haviland’s pieces emphasize the shapes and textures of the logs from which they are carved, and their polished surfaces are a metaphor for beauty of the life force which once animated the living wood,” a Sun art critic wrote in 2003.
“He was a great sculptor who would take rough sections of tree trunks and turn them into highly finished abstract sculptures often mimicking human forms,” Mr. Rouse wrote in the email. “He enjoyed hard physical work.”
On the wall of his studio, Mr. Haviland had a framed quote that summed up his philosophy of sculpture: “The ideal of abstract figuration — of creating things that have the emotional power, in art, of the human body without simply imitating it — is one of the basic themes of modern art, and is the Holy Grail of modern sculpture.”
Mr. Haviland was a fan of musicians Tom Waits, Neil Young and John Prine. A master of the charcoal grill, he enjoyed cooking and hosting large parties for family and friends. He was also a lover of Christmas and looked forward to setting up Christmas trees inside his home that fell two inches shy of its 18-foot-high ceilings.
“When it comes to shooting pool, drinking beer or burning chickens on the grill, Joe was right up there with the best of them,” Mr. Carroll wrote in an email. “He loved grilling, liked burnt chicken, served at every party and ate it. We all ate it, wouldn’t let him down.”
Mr. Carroll said at the end of the evening, Mr. Haviland had a unique way of saying farewell to his guests as they climbed into their cars and turned on headlights.
“Let’s just say pants were not an option,” he said.
“He had quite a personality as many Irish people do,” his wife said. “He was known for his irascible sense of humor and fun.”
Because of the pandemic, a celebration-of-life service is being planned for this spring at his farm, when Mr. Haviland’s ashes will be spread under a grape arbor, said Ms. Haviland.
In addition to his wife of 45 years, he is survived by his son, Zack Haviland of Butler; a brother, Michael Haviland of Towson; and three sisters, Margaret “Peggy” Stansbury of Sparks, Nancy Fish of St. Michaels and Mary Aspinwall of Millsboro, Delaware.