Many wildlife art carvers start out as hunters. But award-winning carver Don Baiar, who has spent countless thousands of hours studying and reproducing the intricate beauty of birds and their plumage, said he’ll never kill an animal again.
(Well, OK. He’s not going to stop eating salmon, he added. But, other than that.)
“I could never shoot anything,” said Baiar, whose backyard in the Fircrest neighborhood of east Vancouver is a personal bird sanctuary and outdoor photo studio. He used to haul lots of expensive photographic equipment into nature, he said; now he let the birds come to him, and captures their likenesses in amazing detail with a digiscope — that is, a digital camera that’s peering through a telescope. “I can take some pretty outrageous pictures that way,” he said.
Furthermore, he added, the internet has completely enriched the world of wildlife carving and art. “There are 10,000 pictures of birds online. Every bird you can think of,” Baiar said. If you want to try something tropical, something unusual, something from the other side of the world, good sources can be found.
If You Go
• What:29th annual Columbia Flyway Wildlife Show and Competition.
• When: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sept. 10 and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sept. 11.
• Where: Water Resources Education Center, 4600 S.E. Columbia Way, Vancouver.
• Cost:Free admission. Many artworks are for sale.
• Information: www.columbiaflywaywildlifeshow.com. Contact Don Baiar at 360-892-6738.
“It’s so much easier today,” Baiar said. “When I started out I was cannibalizing ‘Ranger Rick’ magazines.”
Baiar’s father was a woodworker; Baiar inherited the passion, and wound up a shop teacher in Washougal schools. Then, in 1979, he happened to attend a wildlife carving show at the World Forestry Center in Portland and said he was “absolutely astounded” to discover a fine art form that combined his shop skills and his deep love of nature. He’s been hard at it ever since.
You can spend next weekend examining and shopping the amazingly detailed and lifelike animal artworks that Baiar, his peers and his students spend so much time and trouble on. Baiar, who teaches wildlife carving and painting in his home studio on Mondays and Tuesdays, is a member of the local Feather & Quill Carvers and the lead organizer of next weekend’s annual Columbia Flyway Wildlife Show.
The show, which starts with a carvers’ get-together on Friday night but opens to the public on Sept. 10 and 11, has become one of the nation’s premiere displays of wildlife carving talent. Baiar said he’s pleased that, after shuffling between church basements and motel conference rooms, the show has finally found an appropriately spacious and sunny home in Vancouver’s Water Resources Education Center.
The show is free to the public, but as many as 100 artists are expected to pay nominal fees to have well over 300 creations entered into various divisions and subdivisions for judging and cash prizes — including life-sized and miniature waterfowl, songbirds, birds of prey, mammals and none-of-the-above; and both working (floating) and non-working duck decoys. There’s even an “interpretive” category for slightly less realistic, more artistic creations, Baiar said.
Plus, this year’s 29th annual show has teamed with the National Fish Carvers Guild, which will be judging its own national championship competition at this event.
Many of the artworks will be for sale — with prices starting at affordable to the curious, and reaching up to thousands of dollars for the serious collector.
A single block
Baiar said his favorite question to field is: “How in the world do you glue all those feathers on?”
Answer: He doesn’t, of course. Baiar always begins by outlining a three-dimensional design on a single block of wood — side views and top view. Then he starts cutting and carving. There’s no gluing on of feathers — although there’s plenty of peering through magnifying lenses and working with tiny tools and brushes.
“It’s all about duplicating nature as closely as you possibly can,” he said.
Baiar has won so many awards and taught so many students over the years, he said, he no longer volunteers as a judge. He’d be judging all his own students, he said. “I’ve recused myself,” he said.
Between his projects and his students, he said, he spends most of his time at this labor of love. So does his friend Randy Martin, another organizer of the show, who said Baiar is known in carving circles as “Master Yoda.”
Martin said he thought his aging father would enjoy this recreation and brought him to a Feather & Quill Carver meeting — but Martin himself is the one who got hooked. Handmade Christmas presents for his 9 grandchildren are always in high demand, he said.
“It’s a cheaper midlife crisis than some of the trouble other guys get into,” Martin said.
But not all guys, by the way. Baiar said nearly half of his students are women, and they tend to be better students than the men. They’re more realistic and careful listeners and learners — while the men love to believe that they know what they’re doing, he said.
