FRIDAYEXTRA !
CarvingCulture
The Daily Astorian
Friday, July 17, 2015
Weekend Edition
Joshua Bessex/The Daily Astorian
Jim Bergeron’s woodcarving tools sit on a table at the Barbey Maritime Center.
Traditional, Native American designs have legends
By EDWARD STRATTON
The Daily Astorian
J
Joshua Bessex/The Daily Astorian
Marilyn Rooper applies paint to a raven
woodcarving. Rooper took one of Jim
Bergeron’s woodcarving classes earlier
in the year and continues to come to the
Thursday sessions.
im Bergeron invites you to come
carve with him.
An Oregon State Universi-
ty Extension Sea Grant agent in
Clatsop County until he retired in
2002, Bergeron has taught many
classes on traditional Northwest
Coast Native American wood-
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posed to while living as a graduate
student in Kodiak, Alaska, for a year.
His most recent class was in March at
the Barbey Maritime Center, as part of the
Columbia River Maritime Museum’s series
of classes on traditional crafts.
“At the end of the class, no one wanted
to stop,” Bergeron said.
With the museum’s permission,
Bergeron and his former students start-
ed meeting in the boat-building workshop
on the maritime center’s east wing. Each
Thursday from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., he
lays out his vast collection of tools, along
with copious designs for carvers to sample.
“Most of them are based off animals,”
Bergeron said of the native carvings. “A lot
of them are supernatural animals.
“Almost all of these designs have a leg-
end and a story.”
Bergeron also provides his guidance,
along with fellow longtime carver Lonnie
Acord.
Acord said he started carving as a child
in Ketchikan, Alaska, cutting off broom
handles and making them into toys. At the
workshop in early July, Acord was carving
a wolf’s head dance panel.
“You never look at a piece of wood
the same,” said Marilyn Rooper, one of
Bergeron’s former carving students who
was etching a raven into a cedar board.
The beauty of carving, Bergeron said, is
how someone can take a little time to learn
the tools, buy a two-by-four and entertain
themselves for months on end.
Learning native
Bergeron grew up in northern Minneso-
ta, with Chippewa and Sioux classmates.
He found artifacts along the lake shores and
became intrigued by how they were made.
He came to Oregon in 1964 to study
oceanography in graduate school at Oregon
State.
After returning from his stint in Kodiak,
Bergeron said he wanted to learn to work
with an adze, a curved blade used for shap-
ing wood. He learned from famed sculptor
Douglas Granum, who has work displayed
at the North by Northwest Gallery in Can-
non Beach.
Over the years, Bergeron has taught
many classes for Oregon State at the Hat-
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Clatsop Community College. But the class-
es, he said, became too expensive.
Bergeron’s courses at the maritime
museum cost $75 for five weeks, al-
though he said anyone is welcome to join
the group of carvers on Thursdays. He
even sells cedar and basswood for carvers
to work with.
Joshua Bessex/The Daily Astorian
A stack of carving patterns sits on a table.
Joshua Bessex/The Daily Astorian
Lonnie Acord, of Seaview, carves a north-
ern-style wolf dance wand at the Barbey
Maritime Center during a Thursday carving
session.