Alistair Park's wood carvings

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Alistair Park's wood carvings

I'm a wood carver, based in Bristol in the UK, who teaches and also makes pieces to commission I'm a woodcarver who really enjoys making work for commissions.

I'm also the most experienced wood carver currently teaching these skills in the Bristol area.

08/01/2025

Here's a little mouse to start the New Year.

This was carved for a client who gave it as a present, to a friend named Linda who is an author of children's books. She, in turn, gave me a signed and dedicated copy of her book 'Mischief Wood' for my daughter.

It was lovely to see how delighted my daughter was with her first book to have an author dedication to her in the front pages!

The wood is a piece of (I think) teak, found in a scrap wood offcuts bin while at university and moved around with me for over twenty years. It's good to have finally found a nice use for it. Most of the shaping was done with Saburrtooth carving bits.

The mouse is shown reaching up for something (probably tasty!) with its left paw tucked in in the dainty way that mice sometimes do. I wonder what it has its eye on?

18/12/2024

Here are a few shots from the last half term of the woodcarving course at Bristol Folk House.

There was a real variety of subjects being carved: pot stirrers and spoons, relief carvings of fruit and flowers and Celtic knotwork, character carving, abstract sculpture, a head and a full seated figure. Plenty to keep a tutor on their toes!

I'm looking forward to the next session which begins on the 9th January.

04/10/2024

Wild camping on Dartmoor has helped me through some very tough times in my life.

On the 8th of this month, the Supreme Court will decide if the right to wild camp should be taken away from Stall Moor. If the wealthy financier Alexander Darwall and his wife have their way, you can be sure this right will soon be taken away from the rest of the moor.

I really hope that I can teach my child how to wild camp responsibly and safely there one day.

Find out more about it at:

30/08/2024

Alex from brass hand studios came over to the workshop yesterday. It was great to meet him and we recorded some footage to tie in with a very exciting exhibition that I'm participating in. It will be at the Centrespace gallery in Bristol in November and is called 'Connections through Wood'.

It was interesting to be interviewed and have a chance to think a bit more deeply about questions like 'why do I do this woodcarving lark anyway?'. However, I doubt that some of the pithier responses will make it into the final cut!

If you are around Bristol in November, keep an eye out for this show. It should be a good one.

04/08/2024

Here are a few glimpses from the green man carving workshop that I taught this weekend at Bristol Folk House.

It's always fascinating to see the different interpretations of a subject that people can bring into their carvings in classes. Sometimes it is just as educational for me!

This timeless image of a face or figure and foliage combined really triggered some interesting ideas from the group of students and they produced some great carved images. I hope you enjoy seeing them too.

Thanks to for doing photographic duties on the first image as well.

03/06/2024

Just a simple little turned bowl, but this timber has a story.

It is jarrah, an Australian wood, and the piece used to make this bowl was originally part of the decking of the ship the SS Great Britain. This was once the largest passenger ship in the world and was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. It is now a symbol of Bristol. The weathered and cracked surface around the rim of the bowl is the surface of the deck, which has been left as a feature.

The jarrah deck was fitted during the ship's renovation in the late 1970s/early 1980s. It is currently being replaced and this piece of the reclaimed deck timber was bought from . Thousands of visitors may well have walked over this bit when it was part of that deck.

The bowl itself was given to some of our family in Northern California, as their father has roots on Bristol.

20/04/2024

Day 31 of 30 (!): 2024

As explained in the last post, I've been carving for thirty years but those years fall across thirty-one calendar years. So here's an extra project post for you...

This is the most recent carving that has been handed over to the client. It was carved in oak and was finished a couple of weeks ago. The owl and owlet were commissioned by , a company making play areas, and are now installed at a garden centre near Doncaster.

Putting my most recent completed commission up here seems like a good way to end this series of posts: there's the saying that in creative work you're only as good as your last piece. Thanks the everyone who has taken the time to like or comment on any of these posts and I hope everybody seeing them has enjoyed this brief tour through thirty years of a woodcarver's life.

There are some exciting projects coming up in the near future as well!

19/04/2024

Day 30 of 30: 2023

This blackbird sculpture was carved as a gift for someone using timber from an oak tree that was special to his late mother.

The recipient was one of the volunteer crew on the lifeboat at Portishead, near Bristol. With that in mind, I secretly carved the eyes of the bird from a piece of greenheart timber that lay across the top of the old lock gates into Bristol harbour. He only found this out when the sculpture was given to him.

One thing that I really liked about the sculpture was how alive and alert it looks. I think that making a carving look really alive is one of the trickiest things to pull off, as a piece can take so long to produce. Emotions can be particularly hard to capture: a carver may go through a whole range of them personally during the course of a large carving project!

It was also an important project for me because I knew how much it meant to the people receiving it. I always want a client to be happy and I guess that is one reason why I'm still in business.

So; this is day 30 of posting one project a day from each of the thirty years that I've been carving. I started carving in October 1994 and therefore this is my thirtieth year but those years are spread across thirty-one calender years! So there still needs to be a post for 2024 really. Come back tomorrow to see what that is!

18/04/2024

Day 29 of 30: 2022

I'd admired the work of Bristol-based artist Luke Jerram for a long time and now had the opportunity to work with him on a project.

This piece was installed at Ashton Court Estate in Bristol as the country began to deal with the aftermath of Covid and lockdowns. Visitors were encouraged to hammer coins into the seed-shaped sculpture and make a wish. It was inspired by 'wishing trees', found in various places around Britain and Ireland, and was named 'New Beginnings'.

Luke initiated and led the project, designed the sculpture and funded it. He is standing on the left in the first image. I advised on the timber to use and sourced it, carved the seed itself and helped to install and eventually take down the work. The redwood timber was supplied and expertly cut into segments by .

The second image shows how the seed looked when taken down after over a year of interaction with the public. It was definitely popular!

Despite what some visitors thought, the blackening was mainly due to metal in the coins reacting with the timber, moisture and air. One reason for choosing redwood is that it doesn't burn easily, so vandals would have problems getting a fire going on this easily accessible site. It is a timber that is also durable outdoors and yet soft enough that coins can be hammered into it, so was perfect for this sculpture.

This is one of the collaborative projects that I'm most proud of. It was great to walk up the hill from my workshop occasionally and see people hammering coins into it.

17/04/2024

Day 28 of 30: 2021

These are screen shots of 'Hollington Drive', a programme made by Drive Through Productions and screened on ITV in the UK.

It was the first time that any of my work had been featured on television and was very exciting!

I also enjoyed the challenge of carving work to exacting briefs and tight deadlines. There was no time to make sketches, maquettes or clay models of any pieces before carving - you just had to get on with it.

Other examples of my work have since appeared in a few more productions, such as 'Becoming Elizabeth', 'Truelove' and will be in the upcoming adaptation of the Jilly Cooper novel 'Rivals'. Seeing carvings that I've made appear onscreen hasn't lost any of its excitement either.

16/04/2024

Day 27 of 30: 2020

Anyone who has seen the Marvel 'Guardians of the Galaxy' films will know who this is.

Groot was commissioned to live in the client's garden, so is carved from durable oak and painted with shed paints that should last well outdoors. I do enjoy painting woodcarvings, when it's appropriate to do so.

It was a bit of a shame to see this little character go!

Groot is about 60cm (2') tall.

15/04/2024

Day 26 of 30: 2019

This hibiscus flower was commissioned by the cancer charity Penny Brohn UK and awarded to Peaches Golding, the Lord Lieutenant of Bristol. She is the monarch's representative in the city. I'd read that Peaches likes these flowers and this one was made from some very special pieces of timber.

The calyx and penduncle (the stem bits) were carved from a piece of the greenheart log that originally lay across the top of the North Junction lock gates into Bristol Harbour. It protected the gates from being damaged when bumped by big ships such as the SS Great Britain.

The pistil (the long bit sticking out from the centre ) is lime timber left over from tree work on a grand avenue of limes at Ashton Court Estate in Bristol.

The petals are plum timber (a cousin to the peach tree - geddit?) from Westonbirt Arboretum in Gloucestershire. They have not been artificially coloured in any way.

The stamens (little bits sticking out of the pistil) were carved from pieces of offcut from the mast of the SS Great Britain, fitted when it was brought back from the Falkland Islands in the 1970s. They are Douglas fir.

So this carving is truly a piece of West Country history. A bit of text about each timber was carved onto a base for the glass dome that fits over this sculpture.

The carved hibiscus flower is around life size: about 15cm (6") long.

Address

Bower Ashton Woodyard, Kennel Lodge Road
Bristol

Website

http://www.carvings-with-stories.co.uk/

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