2011 Best Carving Design Contest: Caricature Category Winners

Best Carving Design Contest Archive

2011 Best Carving Design Contest: Caricature Category Winners

People’s Choice

Dan Slater, of Las Vegas, Nev., earned the People's Choice Award with The Soloist.

Dan Slater, of Las Vegas, Nev., earned the People’s Choice Award with The Soloist.

Dan Slater created The Soloist as a wedding present for a friend. “The design was inspired by a friend of mine who plays the violin,” he explained.

The mouse is entirely handcarved from basswood and painted with acrylic paints. The piece is about 5″ tall. Dan turned the base on his lathe from a piece of walnut burl, and he also turned the thimble and bobbin. The stage is a piece of basswood that Dan woodburned and painted. He carved the scissors from a piece of basswood and painted them with silver oil-based paint. The thread is painted string.

Editor’s Choice

Rusty Johnson of Tulsa, Okla., took home the Editor's Choice award for Stop Texting While Driving.

Rusty Johnson of Tulsa, Okla., took home the Editor’s Choice award for Stop Texting While Driving.

The editors loved the scene that Rusty Johnson set with his piece, Stop Texting While Driving. The topic itself is greatly relevant in today’s world, and this piece speaks about the pitfalls of a popular but dangerous behavior. Rusty captured a sense of the classic social satire in this piece, using a humorous setting, the pose of the character, and the positions of the accompanying items to get across an important and powerful idea.

The basswood piece is 8″ wide, 8″ deep, and 10″ tall. Rusty painted it with transparent watercolor paints and sealed it with satin polyurethane.

Scroll down to see a gallery of all of the entries in the Caricature Category.

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