The Warmth and Movement of Wood...

By PETER ROPER THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN

Stand back and put your safety goggles on, because J.R. Hahn is reaching for an ax to set something free. It must be a mindset common to sculptors. Michelangelo once said he didn't sculpt his great marble statues - King David, the Pieta, Moses - so much as he freed them from the rock that imprisoned them. Hahn, who goes by Bob to his 

acquaintances, hasn't been hired by any popes for his work yet, but he still has that X-ray vision of sorts. He can look at a twisted knot of a bristlecone pine stump and see in it the rich-toned figure of a leaping otter. Or a voluptuous Eve or mermaid.

"Sometimes I have to wait for a long time for the muse to tell me what's in a piece of wood," the 65-year-old Hahn explained, pointing to a 5-foot-tall piece of exotic coco bolo wood from South America. "I've been holding onto that one for seven years, waiting to see what's inside." Hahn doesn't sculpt with an ax, but that's what he starts with in the tool-jammed studio at his Hatchett Ranch home southeast of Pueblo. After the roughest outlines of a figure are cut, he then goes 

to work with an arsenal of fine-bladed gouges, rasps and sanders to bring lifelike shapes out of the wood. In Hahn's small gallery are dozens of his figures, ranging from animals to mermaids, African busts to Indian figures, even a whimsical pig on a skateboard. No matter the subject, all of them reflect a sure touch with wood, a good eye for the line of figures in motion, and rich, natural tones.

"Wood is such a wonderful medium because it can have such vivid colors and grain,” Hahn said. "I'm a lousy carpenter - I can't cut a board straight - but I love to sculpt wood." Hahn and his wife, Barbara, moved to Hatchett Ranch several years ago from the Black Forest, northeast of Colorado Springs. He is a retired water broker and has lived most of his life in Colorado, except for a stint in the Navy in the late 1950s and early 1960s. That's how he got started sculpting, carving little wood Polynesian figures while at sea.

"Sometimes there isn't a lot to do when you're riding a destroyer around the Pacific Ocean, so when I saw a friend carving little Tiki figures, I decided to give it a try," he said. Over the years, the hobby became much more serious as Hahn crafted even bigger pieces. In his lovely home are many figures - such as the graceful "Wind Dancer" Indian woman, whose hair and garment embody a prairie wind. As with all of Hahn's pieces, the curve of the wood, its grain and flow are central to the pose of the figure. Hahn spends almost as many hours hunting for raw wood to shape. His favorite is bristlecone pine, which has a striking grain. There is not much of that particular pine in Colorado and Hahn is always on the lookout for interesting pieces of it. "My ideal find was a bristlecone tree that had been struck by lightning, so all of the sap remained in the trunk when the tree was killed," he said. "That provides wonderful wood." He also loves to link a specific wood to a project. For example, a striking but small figure of a lion was sculpted from African ebony wood, giving it a dark charcoal appearance. Hahn has been selling his work for more than a decade and has his own Web site at sculptor-in-wood.com. Viewers can see 90 percent of the work that is for sale at that site. To view the work personally - and it is much more striking in person - call Hahn at 719-676-2324 or visit http://www.sculpture-in-wood.com for an appointment.

Hahn and his wife are glad they left the Black Forest for the scrub oak and big vistas from their house south of Pueblo. "Lord, I was sick of shoveling snow," he groaned. "My wife and I were driving past the Hatchett Ranch several years ago when we just stopped out of curiosity to look at the home sites. To our surprise, we bought one that very day." Outside the front courtyard of his adobe-style home, Hahn has sculpted a totem pole of sorts, depicting all of the animals that he has seen around his home thus far. It includes a badger, fox, rattlesnake, deer, raccoon, owl, coyote and jackrabbit. It's still a work in progress, he noted.

When Hahn works, he sets up a "storyboard" of images of whatever it is he is sculpting. On a recent day, he was working on the image of a bobcat lying on a tree limb. While the piece was still in a rough stage, Hahn had a series of photographs of a bobcat pinned to a large piece of poster board, giving him a reminder of the shape of the animal's face, ears, feet and body. "Of course, the best thing would be to have a bobcat in the studio," he said. It was obvious from the raw wood that it lent itself to the image of an animal lying on a tree limb. Which raised the question of why Hahn somehow was able to see shapely nude women in some pieces of wood but no similarly unclad men. "Too many years in the Navy, I guess," the sculptor laughed.