Creating a dancer

Local artist completes new work of Native American woman

Local woodworker and artist Jeremy Smith has been turning logs and stumps into beautiful creations for quite some time. But he recently completed one of his favorite pieces.

A good friend, and Vietnam veteran, asked Smith if he had ever carved or sculpted a Native American woman.

“I had never done that before,” Smith said. “And I’ve been wanting to carve a Fancy Shawl Dancer for a while. I figured this was a great opportunity for me to try that.”

Fancy dance, Fancy Feather or Fancy War Dance is a style of Native American dance. The women’s fancy shawl dance represents the opening of a cocoon when the butterfly emerges. The shawl is usually an extravagant part of the overall display, being colorful and flashy, often featuring embroidery or ribbon work. The fringe on the shawl accentuates the dancer’s movements.

Smith said for many of his projects, he doesn’t sketch out a design or even outline the wood he’s about to carve.

“I just start carving, he said. “In some cases you get chalk and draw an outline of the figure but for the most part I look at a piece of wood and the shapes just sort of line up in my head. I see the finished shape.”

The, working from the outside in, he carves the wood back revealing corners and curves, then eventually more detailed aspects of the piece.

The Fancy Shawl Dancer sculpture in the photos is actually the third incarnation of his idea for a Native American woman. It’s about 3 feet tall, and depicts a dancer in full flight, with her long shawl draped about her and tassels twirling with her every movement.

The coloration was done by burning the wood to give it a darker color, then sanding away the parts that needed to be lighter. Smith said he can’t say definitively how long the entire process took from start to finish, but it was “a serious investment in time.”

Smith said he is always taking commissions for sculptures. He said animals seem the be the most sought-after subjects but he is open to almost any shape clients can think of.

He can be contacted on Facebook by searching “Other Level Sculptures.”

Contributed It’s hard to imagine a log eventually becoming a beautiful Native American dancer, but as this photo early in the process shows, Smith has a vision for the sculpture’s shape and begins carving away from the outside in, revealing lines and curves that will eventually become his dancer.

Contributed Smith couldn’t estimate how long this sculpture took, but he said it was a considerable amount of time, but worth it as the commission came from a good friend and Vietnam veteran.