14 -— Friday October 18.1998 0 North Shore Mews

EWS photo Terry Peters
JEFFREY Whiting admits he doesn't have the same obsession for detail that led him to dedicate 1,500 hours to the hummingbird sculp-

ture he carved and painted while a teen. Since then, he's turned his attention to less intricate carvings, book publishing and teaching.

The art

EFFREY Whiting has a passion for art that borders
on obsession.

As the 26-year-old artist gingerly removes his “keeper piece” from
a pinewood bos, he describes the painstaking effort that went into its
creation, It isa sculpture of a ruby-throated hummingbird confronted
by a wasp,

Whiting used tupelo, an exotic Wood native to the southern
United States, for the life-size hummer, birch for its raypberry cane
perch, metal for the wasp's appendages and acetate for its wings.

He used “wool” — or more precisely, the hair trom his granny’s
bichon trisse poodle — to craft the many hundred plant hairs of a
blueweed, abso carved from tupelo, (“fused a five-step process tor
each hair,” recalls the artist, as ifsach outlandish attention to detail

were entirely natural.) A web of carved roots winds round a jet-black limestone

base.

The sculpture took the arust 1500 hours te complete. He was 19 ar the time.

Whiting won't be carving another like it anstime soon.

“Fechnieally it's not a challenge anymore,” says the litelong nature lover, who
moved trom Gtuwa to the North Shore in Jung. “Pin rot concerned with getting

any more detailed (in my work.”

Layne CHRISTENSEN

NEWS REPORTER

ife’s deta

In 1990, with just three vears of carving experience and no formal
training, Whiting captured tinst prize in the loon category at the pres-
tigiotts Ward Foundation World Championship Watertow! Carving
Competition in Maryland,

When he was still a teen, the Canadian Mint used his loon carvings in
4 promotion for the launch of the one dollar coin. He gained further
recoxnition when former prone minister Brian Mulroney presented a
Joon carving to Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh.

His “environmental portraits” as he calls his litesize sculptures of
birds, inscets and plant fife, are so exacting in detail that they have
been mistaken for the real McCoy.

At an art show in Outawa when he was 17, he was approached by a
gallery visitor who was extremely irate,

“She started laying into me for deseerating, this art show with dead

animals,” recalls the soft-spoken artist. Winting immediately calmed the viewer by
drawing her attention co the feather: by-feather accuracy of his arr.
Whiting started carving when he was 15. He credits his high-school industrial

arts teacher with turning him on to the craft. Asa teen, he was rarely seen outside

of class,
“Espent high school in my basement,” he says.“ 1 was bolting into class and

leaving night afterwards.”

Whiting’s stunning artention to detail has won him international recognition

and respect in the competitive tied of wildlite carving.

Sve Teaching page YW

All-star
lineup
set for
writers’
festival

John Moore

Courrvibuting Writer

8 Vhe Vancouver
Imernational Writers
Festival Ovi. 21 ta Get. 25 at
Granville Island.

POETS, playwrights,
novelists and more than
60 writers representing
11 countries, will
descend on Granville
Island and selected
satellite venues for a
five-day celebration of
the written word from
Wednesday Oct 21 to
Sunday Oct. 25.

The Vancouver
International Writers (&
Readers) Festival has an all-
star tineup af iecal and inter-
national literary stars slated to
appear mab CNCTUTEE VATICTY
of readings, panel discussions
and workshops.

The fall incup is teo dong
to list, but the following
events are sure-fire highhghts
you'll want co book early:

> The Bill Duthie
Memorial Lecture. Sundey,
Oct. 25, Venue: The Stankey
Theatre . “Time: 7-9 p.m.
Cost: $23 4 ST Arts Club
surcharge. Speaker — Frank
MeCourt.

The author of the Palitzer
Prize-winning best-seller,
Aagela's Ashes, will no doubt
have plenty te say (he is an
trishinan), all of it highly
entertaining (he is an
Irishman}, on the subject of
his sharp trajectory into hirer-
ary fame from total obscuricy.
In facet, as McCourt recently
admitted ina date night inter-
view with ‘Tor Sayder, held

Rerton page 22

CALENDAR:15 BOOKS:17 THEATRE:22 MOBY DICK:28 DINING:29