From the first rough cut to the final finishing touch, every woodcarving is a journey: a path of thought, intent, and action behind every movement of blade against wood.

Born from Wood: The Niagara Frontier Wood Carvers features the woodworks of thirteen members of the Niagara Frontier Wood Carvers club, currently based in North Tonawanda, also known as 'The Lumber City'. This exhibit provides a glimpse into the tools, techniques, meanings, and materials found in wood carving and wood burning: from caricatures and relief carvings to figurative sculptures and ‘unburned’ artworks.

Wood carving is the traditional art of creating designs and figures out of wood with bladed tools such as knives, gouges, chisels, and saws. Carving art out of wood requires great patience, focus, and perseverance to bring each figure, motif, and design to life.

Related to wood carving is wood burning, where designs are made on the surface of the wood itself through the use of heated metal-tip tools like a soldering pen. 

Born from Wood: The Niagara Frontier Wood Carvers is curated by Niagara University students in the Art History with Museum Studies course AHM357A: Exhibiting Cultures in collaboration with the Niagara Frontier Wood Carvers. We hope that it sparks your curiosity in the traditional arts of wood carving and wood burning and inspires your creative pursuits.

Click here for a digital copy of the exhibit catalog.

Born from Wood: The Niagara Frontier Wood Carvers is made possible in part through the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.