The Vancouver Sun from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada • 78

1 I i n-n. -f- HE ARTIST works in the smaller A-frame. Here he designs and painstakingly carves the smooth shaped animals, nude figures and mythical monsters which are gradually He is also popping little white glycerine pills, which is something people do when they think they might be getting within heart attack range, so maybe this Is not so funny. Mikelson works' about 120 hours a week, starting at 5 a.m. He smokes cigarettes, and his doctor is beginning to get heavy.

'This is a secret I don't dare tell anybody. I'm still working for $2 an hour." Which is why he works so hard. "My best income was In 1961 and I've been going down ever since. I've been considering going back to office work, but once you get into something like this, there's no way out. When I figure out who to picket, I go on strike." The workshop is warm and cozy.

Somewhere a radio plays quietly as the artist selects a chisel from the huge clutter of tools on his bench and proceeds, with soft pudgy fingers, to cut put the serrated wing patterns which characterize many of his bird designs. Along the ceiling hang hundreds of paper cutouts, successful models. Aromatic, resinous scents hang in the dust. "I'll use any decent wood," says Mikelson. "Whatev-er's commercially available.

I don't use more than 1 ,000 board feet a year. My favorite Is satin walnut, but satin walnut is not walnut. It's eucalyptus dense, medium hard, very colorful In the grain. Honduras mahogany is another good one." You can also find Mikelson sculptures in teak, oak, birch, Tennessee red cedar, yellow cedar, Brazilian and black walnuts even unusual woods like jelutong, a kind of palm, and cascara. He likes to experiment with rarely available stocks.

Mikelson draws a design for each sculpture, roughs out the pieces on a band saw, laminates the parts, then finishes carving with chisels and gouges, an electric hand grinder, sandpaper, and a coating of Benjamin Moore Imperial satin varnish. "It's the best," says Mikelson, who should know, "and I don't own stock in the company," so you can consider this a free plug. "On a small piece it's advantageous to pre-lamlnate, so you've got something to work with. If it's a very large piece, if better to carve the portions before you glue them together. I never use clamps at all." He makes about 250 sculptures a year.

His soft voice murmurs on, explaining, philosophizing. You could almost mistake It for a Scottish brogue, although Mikelson hails from Latvia, the son of a cabinetmaker. In 1947 he went to England as a refugee, where he became a porcelain designer for the famous Royal Crown Derby factory, specializing in bird figurines, many of which are still being produced. His spindly Chelsea birds are a traditional porcelain motif. In 1953, at the age of 31, he came to Canada and worked for 14 years as an architectural draughtsman.

Carving has been a more than full-time occupation since 1967. We move to the gallery, to examine the Mikelson line: the popular, surprisingly inexpensive smaller birds seagulls, Canada geese, petrels, hummingbirds which he makes in multiples, but no two precisely alike; elongated wading fowl like bitterns and ibis, necks entwined and outstretched, and sinuous sharks and dolphins and the solid, dependable mammals moose -and bison, their shaggy coats mottled by a small hammer punch. A bird series made with different light and dark colored woods, which Mikelson thought would sell well, didn't. We pause in front of a nymph, an abruptly rounded and sharp-featured erotic fantasy. "If I had my way," says Mikelson, "I'd carve nothing but monsters and naked women." One mythical beast is beside us, half-woman, half-eagle, devouring a pair of hearts impaled on a sword.

Another Is easier to take a winged ibex. "These things never sell," Mikelson shrugs. But the naked women do, and so do the birds and fish, as fast as he can carve them. Mikelson shrugs again, and smiles. He lights another cigarette and heads back to the workshop.

Publicity is valuable, but work comes first. making a name for him across the continent. "One of the world's best wood carvers," says a recent Mikelson feature in Fine Woodworking magazine, read bi-monthly by 200,000 craftsmen throughout North America. You can see his creations without going all the way to White Rock at the Blue Robin Gallery, 2950 Granville, where hundreds of Mikelson sculptures are sold every year. This morning we're running a little late nothing unusual, but at least we have a decent excuse.

A 20-minute wait on the Oak Street Bridge while two fire-engines, six police cars and various emergency vehicles pry apart a pair of mildly entangled Volkswagens. Twenty minutes, we repeat, sipping coffee at Mary and Arnold Mikelson's family sized kitchen table. Mikelson is supremely unimpressed with this flimsy pretext. We have upset his tight schedule and he attempts to project a scowl past the bushy grey beard. It doesn't get far.

Mikelson and good nature go together like racoons and his four children's beloved yet rapidly diminishing chickens. Example: Your agent, ever helpful, Is carrying out a large, delicate sculpture of two spindly, crane-like Chelsea birds (a Mikelson speciality) to be photographed. A wing tip brushes against the wall with a crack, and a tiny piece of wood breaks off. Tiny, I say. Tiny, tiny, tiny.

Your agent regards the sound with consternation. He had not contemplated the purchase of a $3,500 sculpture, especially so close to ICBC time, and he doubts whether he can slip this by the editor as a legitimate expense. Gas $18. Lunch $4.75. Misc.

$3,500. No, It will never work. Mary is reassuring, explaining how the sculptures are glued together anyway, and how one more tiny, tiny piece will not even be noticeable. I spy Mikelson out of the corner of my eye, cautiously. He is laugning.

Some klutz is imperilling his entire operation, and the man is laughing. iff. I ji 1 GLENN BAQLO MIKELSON sculpts one of his popular birds In workshop fn.in VirT-n- 4L THE VANCOUVER SUN: FRIDAY, FEB. 15, 1980.