Carving From The Heart
Frank Galli ~part bear~part monk~all heart
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Living on a farm near Sarona, Wisconsin in Madge township, Neighbor Frank Galli spends the winter carving. He enjoys making tools, bowls, and animal sculpture from wood. Nick Vander Puy from the Superior Broadcast Network talks with Frank Galli about his latest creation.
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Frank Galli carves a yoke for carrying maple syrup buckets because he enjoys making useful tools that aren’t square, plumb, or level.
There’s a pile of basswood shavings on the basement floor.
Frank Galli presses down with a sharp gouge on a roughed out carrying yoke.
“I’m cutting out on this piece of basswood and I’m making a yoke
for carrying out maple sap out of woods.”
Before indoor plumbing people used yokes like these to carry in water and milk. The yoke was also used in the spring to carry sap for maple sugaring.
Galli is making this yoke for me. That’s because it’s getting harder for me to carry buckets during sugaring. The yoke will make it easier for me to use my neck muscles.
“And I’m fitting it for the shoulders, so it fits nice on your back, (carving sounds) it must be the same noise a beaver makes. See how sharp that tool is to take that much out.”
Besides the gouge, Galli uses a broad axe, an adz, a draw knife, and an elegant Japanese wood cutting saw.
He doesn’t use electric tools.
The gouge is really sharp. Big curls of basswood pile up on the floor.
“And you can’t make a mistake, like the beaver never makes a mistake, the only time a beaver makes a mistake is when the tree falls on him and kills him. Ooops! And you try to make those nice long curls. See that, ain’t it pretty.”
“The thing about carving and getting good at…here are my words of wisdom, there’s a phrase in Latin “Continuatum Cahratzio”, continuous creation, you all of a sudden get good at it, and it’s easy and fun.”
Friends say Frank Galli is part bear and part Franciscan monk.
Actually, he spent years in a monastery, then he went north to Alaska to work as a commercial fisherman. After hauling nets on the ocean he settled in northwestern Wisconsin to farm and build houses.
But carpentry bored him.
“And I really got bummed out making everything square, and plumb, and level, and this way when I carve nothing has to be square, and plumb, and level, it can always be a little bit off and it’s jus right. It’s just perfect.”
Galli thinks most of the world is off plumb.
“There ain’t nothing the creator made…the only time that anything is ever level, is when there’s no wind blowing on the water, and then it’s only level for ten miles before the curvature of the earth kicks in.”
Like the beautiful curved carrying yoke he’s finishing, Galli says there are some things that just can’t be measured.
I keep taking my glove off and feeling the thickness, it goes where you tell it to, it’s nice and soft, it’s pretty.”
Galli says when he gets done carving he has a wonderful, positive feeling of well being.
“It’s not like I’m The Creator, but, I am the creator.”
I’m Nick Vander Puy for the Superior Broadcast Network
photos and web layout- Sandy Lyon
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