A passion grounded in wood and stone
Carving is more than a hobby for Jody
Levin artist Jody Burgess can get lost. For hours. He goes into a “cave” and returns when he’s ready, having crafted another piece of work. His art is not arrived at through brush and paint, but rather from carving and sculpting in his backyard.
The “caves” to which he retreats are repurposed shipping containers that house a wall-to-wall array of intricate tools that grind, polish, cut and chisel stone or wood into art. It’s organised chaos, but you get the feeling he knows exactly where everything is.
Burgess, 56, started carving three years ago and simply hasn’t stopped. He was mostly self-taught. He started off tinkering with coins and tiny stones, but now his work is progressing in size and scale.
The next project is to sculpt a huge volcanic rock from Taranaki that arrived by truck a few weeks ago.
It’s in his backyard on a pallet. Once finished, it would easily be his largest work yet.
Burgess did art as a School Certificate subject in the fifth form and failed miserably “along with many other subjects”.
“I sucked at painting.
“But I liked art and am finally at an age now where I can do it. I was always rip, s*** and bust, never stopping. Now I can come in here . . . it’s taught me to slow down and focus on one thing at a time, doing something I enjoy.
“I was a lunatic and couldn’t sit still for two minutes, but I can come out here and carve for six hours straight . . . and keeping my hands occupied is good for my cigarette smoking.” “Like many artists, I’ve got a few hang-ups, but it would be good to one day get to a point where I can say, wow, I did that.”
Burgess was influenced in his art having researched his whakapapa.
His hobby took on more meaning as a result and became a full-blown passion.
“That’s the interesting thing. I could have carved anything. I’m on this journey. I’m still on this journey,” he said.
He had enrolled in a course at Te Wanganga o Raukawa in O¯ taki and saw himself as a lifelong student of art, learning how to express the telling
of a story through his work.
He began carving tiki and has now created many working koauau.
“You start carving because, I don’t know, you see a beautiful piece of wood and carve it and turn it into something.
“I hope I have enough time left in life that I can do something that I will be proud of.”
He likes the permanence of stone and sees more than just rock or pebble, conscious of the forces required in the stone’s formation and its life cycle.
“It all returns to the earth eventually.”
Burgess has made the odd wedding ring before when asked, but mostly his work goes into a box and when he’s ready he starts again on the next one. There is no end game. It’s simply a passion.
It’s probably no coincidence his art had a physical element as he was a fitter/turner by trade and had spent time working with steel on high-rise buildings in the US, while he had also worked in animation for companies such as Atari and Time Warner.
Burgess has lived in Levin for the past two decades. For many years he also operated a successful parrot ranch south of Levin that was popular with tourists and school groups.
He says he loves the town and the people in it.