Roger Wing - Making Art with Natural Resources - 004
Manage episode 353721286 series 3441978
Born in Columbus, Ohio in 1968, from an early age travel and world cultures inspired his love of art prompting him to engage in the creation of art ultimately describing himself as an artist when he was a child.
Roger began woodcarving while a student at The University of California, Santa Cruz in the 1980’s where he studied under master sculptor, Jack Zajac. After college, he visited Japan to study the country’s rich woodcarving heritage where he was introduced to Koyo Taketani, a carver of traditional wooden dolls, who gave Wing his first Japanese tools. The Japanese mallet made especially for Wing almost 30 years ago is a tool that he uses daily.
Roger names Christopher Gonzales, a leading Jamaican sculptor, and Barrington MacLean, a Panamanian born artist and Wing’s first woodcarving instructor as two of his early influences. His love of woodcarving has carried over to many other materials and Roger is also adept with stone, ice, snow and sand.
His work is mostly figurative, and Roger’s art makes me feel like he has plucked a character from a magical, mystical world and rendered them into a 3-dimensional form from a piece of wood, a block of ice, or whatever he is using to bring them to life. What inspires me the most about Roger’s work is the confidence that emotes from his pieces and I may be biased because we are Friends, but Roger’s work motivates me to stay creative because he is just that good!
Roger’s art is known worldwide, and he’s been to places like a remote Zimbabwe artist community where he got his first taste of stone carving. He has also been invited multiple times to carve ice in China, Finland, Poland, and Germany and he has been invited to carve sand at the top international events. Roger currently works out of his studio at 40th and Westminster in West Philadelphia.
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