CARVERS CLUB CREATES UNIQUE ART TO THANK CHURCH FOR GIVING IT HOME

It took 11 members of the River Valley Carvers Club hundreds of manhours to complete two, five-panel relief carvings for the Bethany Baptist Church in Cape Girardeau. And they did it all just to say thank you.

Sharon Ledure, club president, said the 4-year-old group of 38 woodworkers needed a place to meet and Bethany Church opened its basement doors to them. In appreciation, the club members got together and planned out the relief carvings. The group was comprised of Ledure and her husband, Dave, Jerry Huskey, August Birk, Ken Schiwitz, Carroll Snead, Larry Stanfill, Judy Watson, Jim Whittaker and Allen Danner

"We had a hard time as a club finding a place to meet," Ledure said. "Nobody wants you to have knives and work in their building. After we were meeting here a couple of years, we started saying we needed to do something as a thank-you for the church."

"The church gave us a place to meet: They furnish the heating and the air conditioning; they give us access to the kitchen," Whittaker said. "I think we came out better than the church in the end."

The two panels depict five scenes each from the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. They are carved from bass wood, stained, framed and mounted on either sides of the altar. And it is almost impossible to affix a price to them.

"I'd say you could get a couple thousand dollars for them," said Krueger, who is a member of both the club and the church. "I wouldn't want to try and put a value on it though."

The carvings will be dedicated during a 2-p.m. service Sunday at the church. One panel, a carving of a dove in with the new testament series, holds particular significance to the group: It was started by Danner, who was a member of the Carvers club until he died last year. His design was about one-third complete at that time. After some discussion within the group, it was decided that Birk would finish the carving in his memory.

Ledure said the Carvers group is made up of young and old, experienced and novice woodworkers. There is one member of the group, Charlie Mungle, who also carves in leather. They meet once a month for seminars, sideshows or to carve together. During the winter they get together for Saturday workshops, and there is a class once a month.

"We all get together and carve and have a real good time," Ledure said. "One of the most common statements we hear when we go demonstrate somewhere is, 'Oh, I don't have the patience for that.' Actually it kind of helps to de-stress your life. It's really very relaxing."

Members, who range from nearly professional woodworkers to one man who participates simply because he is interested in the art and has said he may never carve, are widely diverse in the tools they use.

"We have one lady who carves 1-inch-tall gnomes, and we have Mr. Birk who does a lot of chain-saw carvings. So it runs the whole gamut," Ledure said. "Most of them carve with hand tools, some use both hand tools and power tools, and we a few that would rather use power tools exclusively.

"And I don't know just how we'd qualify Mr. Birk's chain saw."

Ledure said the purpose of the group was to encourage each other's work and foster an interest in an ancient art.

"We wanted to keep alive the art of wood carving," Ledure said. "For a long time it was nearly dying out, but recently there's been a resurgence of interest."