Hershey carves realistic wooden bird sculptures
Jim Hershey, of Bella Vista, has been carving wood sculptures for more than 40 years and has developed skills that allow him to create very realistic-looking birds.
His interest in birds goes back to when he was 10 or 12 years old, he said. He would buy plastic model kits that were birds and put them together and paint them. As a child he also did some wood burning after his parents gave him a kit.
As an adult he was working at a plant in Colorado and, in 1980, a coworker invited him to attend woodworking classes in Denver along with some other coworkers. The club met in a shop that sold wood and carving tools, and he attended classes twice a week for about five years. At that time he learned to carve birds.
Hershey explained there are knives for carving and tools called gouges. Gouges have a beveled edge, and they vary in the degree of how deep the bevel is. He uses bass wood for his pieces, a white wood that does not have much grain but also has a straight grain, he said. Those characteristics make it easier to carve than other types of wood.
Twenty years after Hershey began carving birds he became interested in power tools for carving. The tool available at the time was rather cumbersome, he said, but the ones on the market now allow for better carving. They are called micro-motors and consist of a hand tool with many different interchangeable bits of varying sizes.
He said he takes his hand tools when he is going to a carving club (he is a member of the Rogers Woodcarvers Club and the Bella Vista Woodcarvers Club), but for everyday carving he prefers his power tools. They are better for doing fine details, such as fingernails on the human caricatures he has been carving of late. In fact, he said, if he tries to carve the finest details with a knife, the wood will break.
“They just do a really great job. You can just do so much more detail without damaging the wood. Some people don’t like power tools, but I say do whatever you need to make a successful carving,” he said.
He said he tries to make the birds look real and natural.
Hershey noted he has had limited success in selling the birds. He could put hundreds of hours of work into one bird, and so the price point would be rather high, he said, and people have been unwilling to pay what the birds are worth. He ended up collecting a lot of them and giving a lot of them away to his children, his mother, his daughter’s friends, people he worked with and his sister.
After moving to Bella Vista with his sister, Sharon Chappell, three and a half years ago, he ended up putting a chickadee sculpture for sale at The Bluebird Shed, and it sold right away, he said. People requested some cardinals, and so he also has some cardinals for sale there.
“I get more satisfaction out of someone who’s looking at my work saying ‘that’s really beautiful’ than selling it for money,” he said.
He credited Chappell with challenging him to stretch himself in his art.
“She challenges me to do something and get it done,” he said. “Painting has always been my shortcoming. She has taught me so much about painting, mixing colors to make things look better. She’s challenged me in a lot of ways.”
He said of his hobby, “I find it’s so peaceful. I can just sit there, and time will fly by. I’ve always liked creating things with my hands. I’ve always liked working with wood.”