I first started at the Bemidji (Minn.) Pioneer as an intern in the summer of 1996. That would begin six years as a news reporter, sports reporter and copy editor for a small, six-day-per-week daily newspaper in northern Minnesota. I wrote a large range of stories from multiple beats, to features to sports, my favorite being the coverage of the Red Lake Reservation High School basketball team named the Warriors. Here is a collection of my stories from my time at the Pioneer.
July 27, 1997
By Devlyn Brooks
Staff Writer
BLACKDUCK -- Local wood carving master Jim Schram sat deep in the shade of his tent Saturday, behind his table and wooden shelves adorned with wood carvings of birds and other various objects.
Saturday's 90 degree heat had forced Schram and his woodcarving wife, Ev, into the shade long before the crowds began to gather, and in between fielding questions from a reporter, he would greet familiar faces pacing by his booth and quote prices on his wood carvings -- all from his folding lawn chair at the back of his temporary shop.
Schram and his wife manned just one of 60 wood carving booths set up at the annual Blackduck Wood Carvers Festival. The event, in its 14th year, drew wood carvers of all skill levels from around the region and even from Wisconsin, Iowa and North Dakota. Some of those mingling around the booths buying carvings, asking carving advice or just sight-seeing probably came from even farther away.
The festival, one of only a few in Minnesota and especially unique to northern Minnesota, draws about 3,000 people a year to Blackduck, making the festival Blackduck's day to shine.
In fact, according to one of the event's founders, Ann Floura, that is exactly why her and a small group started the festival 14 years ago -- to bring people into Blackduck. According to Floura, she and another Blackduck resident were sitting around discussing the fact that their town had no special event to call their own. Most other northern Minnesota towns did, and this was a fact that did not escape them.
Conveniently, Schram, formerly of Minneapolis and retired from AT&T, had just moved into the area and was becoming quite popular because of the wood carving classes he was teaching. A small group of unorganized wood carvers sprang up, and they seized on the hobby's local popularity. The Blackduck Wood Carvers Festival was born.
The first year only 18 carvers attended, according to Schram, the event's unofficial historian, and most of them were local. the next year word spread farther, and they gained another 10 or so carvers, and now 14 years later, 60 showed for Saturday's event.
One could find a vast array of carvings and techniques used among the thousands of carvings -- anything from animals to gnomes to Santa Claus to a half snowmobile-half fish tail carving. The carvings were made out of a long list of various woods and barks, and some were painted and others not. The selection was as vast as the carvers' imaginations.
Schram, one of the few carvers who has shown his work all 14 years, said the show is unique in the sense that it is a festival. The carvers are there to have fun, and they return year after year to see their colleagues as much as to do business. There is almost a convention atmosphere among the booths, with many carvers displaying their latest accomplishments -- many of which are not for sale -- and discussing wood carving secrets.
"People didn't use to part with their carving secrets, but that doesn't happen anymore. There are a lot of young carvers, and people help each other out," Schram said as he was selling a "blank" form of a bird to a customer. "Carving is one of the fastest growing hobbies in the nation, especially among women."
Schram, who has been carving for 22 years, said the secret of carving is to have a desire for the art. Somebody who is not interested will not have the patience to do much of the detailed work that is necessary.
"But once you're hooked ... you're hooked," he said.
Another aspect of the hobby, and one that attracts many carvers, is that a person can start for next to nothing -- $7 to $ 8 for a carving knife and a $1 to $2 for a blank, an outlined, blocked form of a carving.
However, those who set up booths at the shows are more serious, Schram said. For instance, he uses the money he makes from his carvings to buy some of the power tools he uses on his carvings.
Another carver, Gen Jansen of St. Cloud, took her hobby to that next step Schram describes. Twenty years ago, her husband gave her an inexpensive set of carving tools for Christmas, and eight years later, she quit her job as a high school biology teacher to earn a living carving.
Jansen said she has been attending carvers' events and juried art shows for about 12 years. She also sells some work at a co-op art store in St. Cloud and does commission pieces -- customized carvings ordered by people attending shows. She has written six books about carving, her latest on how to carve cottonwood bark, and teaches wood carving classes in St. Cloud.
"It started out as a hobby, and it got away from me. I don't ever want to enter another biology classroom again," she said. "I don't make as much money, but I'm a lot happier. And I'm going to live longer. It's my husband's fault; he unleased a monster."
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