Brent was inspired to carve by a chance meeting with an  immigrant from Estonia who came to the US with his wife after WWII. The couple lived in Crosby MN and had some feral kittens living under their porch.

The kittens mother  had been run over by a car, and Brent was lucky enough to draw the short straw and the privilege of rescuing the kittens, they had not had any human contact up to that point.

The couple must have felt sorry for the young man, and invited him in. The immigrant was Karl Alla and was an excellent bird carver, the rest is history.

30 years later

The first commissioned piece "Argus" was 12/4 black walnut, it was a commission for a client back in '06. 

The sculpture was a learning experience, a heavy duty sculpting stand was needed, it would have to support a 150 pound block of wood.

 A laminating stand for clamping the planks during glue up was built next.

 After improvements to the first and second versions of these pieces of equipment, a few more sculptures were began to test them out.

The next hurdle was obtaining walnut of a suitable size for sculpting life size busts.

Walnut trees this large are rare and a green log is unstable and will crack and check as it dries.

After finding a source for prime walnut logs, a solar kiln was built to dry the wood. The logs are slabbed into 2 to 3 inch thick planks, each plank is numbered, after drying the planks are planed and glued into the same order they were sawed.

 Each glued up block is from the same tree, and the growth rings are matched and grain is running the same directions to the original grain.

---------------------------------------------

Below  is the second roman soldier bust, carved  later with major improvements.