Elwin Millerick, master whittler

it's just one piece of wood and you pre prep it on a power saw and then you start whipping around each piece individually and you work down through with it with a knife. That's a jackknife And it's a weird looking job. Wood carving and Woodling has

a different things. And woodcarving is your work is usually fastened down and Woodley is hand held. So that's why I always call myself a Whitlow because Whitlow is a doodler. L Windmill Rick was born November 25, 1911 on a dairy ranch on what had been the

old fairground. He was the first child of four brothers Petaluma in l Wednesday was already the world's egg basket, a title that would enjoy for another half century. Its location on the tidal stream had made it the first commercial center in the early days and the

town the mill rick family grew up in was still a very busy place. While L one was 10 years old, he started to Whittle while herding cattle. Then he turned to model airplanes. He married peg in 1935

when he was 24 years. Sonoma County has more than its share of riches. And Elwyn Norick is among its treasures. I only got the wrist wrestlers that it's back to a period of time. I actually remember a little bit about that when I was a kid.

My dad had stopped by and maybe there'll be a couple of guys in there instead of rolling dice for drinks that maybe arm russell. What are the types of woods that you use in the carvings. Oh, I use some olive wood. Mostly what I'm picking up

scraps. Is it always hard word or sometimes soft try to use a harder wood. Soft woods have a tendency to break when you're trying to do the detail like fingers and if you're using a soft wood, they break off this cougar for instance, the teeth bitter

in it. If that's a soft word, they probably would have probably broken off in the process of carving About 1926 when, when a big big thing was starting to happen. I was 14 and I would have met on airplanes. That was a

big change in the way of life for everybody. Well we got a circus picture here. We usually have a circus coming to town maybe once a year. And in this case, what I try to do is get guys driving the stakes to hold up the tent.

It was a real synchronized situation in this day and age. Now they've replaced all of that with power hammers. Now that, that's the basket weaving and the TP in the back, which was bark off the redwood trees and and just stacked up in a pyramid and

gave them a shelter to get underneath and shed water. These are all done to a scale. I've worked on this stuff. I worked to a 2" scale, which is actually 16 size of a six ft person. You've got a 12, 12 minutes figure If you

want to know what the hand sizes, just take my own hand and take the ruler and lay across this 4" or 6-4". Oh we got a barn dance scene now we've got an accordion player, mandolin and then we've got the girls dancing and we even got

a couple of sacks here in case you want to sit down from an overhead view, you see the grain sacks and Halder ropes hanging in the stall. We got Burbank and the cactus, the characters is build up each one

of those palms, that cactus is a separate piece and then then there there were little little holes to be drilled in the end of each where the small end of the next problem of the cactus would fit into it and it's quite strong, it looks fragile.

So we got the old cowpoke there end of the day, come in the horses in the corral, he's turning the saddle over the fence and rolling himself a bull Durham cigarette and then the sheep shears, they travel in groups and and sharing season

so much per each. They only have a very short season, be just like an ocean of woolley's going down the road. Black Bart, he was the one that held up the stage coach in Sonoma County over here cassandra once well as part of stage coaches and

how they caught up with him he'd lost his handkerchief and when they found the handkerchief, the laundry mark on traced back to the chinese laundries in san Francisco and they found out who it was wound up in san Quentin, what kind of tools did you use

to get the detail pocket knife with some of it and little gouges to take out the background. I had a stain I made of black watts, you know when they fall off the trees and they lay on the ground, they get dry and they gather up

the dried up walnut shells and put them in a bucket of water and store them up every day or so for a few days and then strain went out and then put it in a jug, try to keep things natural on the wood, you

know this is the old battle and it's one of the old iron ships that Alaska packers that acquired getting the salmon out of Alaska each year. Then this group of people got it and they made a gambling ship, We're anchored off the coast and then it

became a museum ship down there in san Francisco building a model of it. The whole model is complete. There are no plans of it anywhere to do the plans for the rigging and all the masts and spars. Everything has to be measured directly. It was a

case of climbing up to that rigging and measuring all these things on the bow, spread my legs wrapped around underneath the guidelines. I get cramps to get the, the height of that from the water. I had to pick a real calm day. It was early in

the morning before any breezes had come up and then I take a long tape and I'd be up there and drop it down until I just touched the water. And I could get the distance and the distance from the water. Up to that vertically. It was

33 ft. And about that time I had a heart attack and the doctor advised any more of that kind of messing, always messing around has been a real plus for the museum. His work is created for the community and has been given to us for safekeeping.

His scale models draw you into an earlier time. He is constantly experimenting with different techniques, adding paint, fabric and color as well as natural stains. These carvings are really inviting. They're three dimensional and tactile, they make you want to stare at

them. Think about them. Let your mind ask questions in this carving, Elwyn has incorporated all of the things that he does so well, reliefs, scale models and figurative carvings. He's got the figure of veracity, who is the father of the wine industry in California.

He's got a scale model of a vintage wine press and two really excellent relief carvings as backdrops carved on scale models of wine barrels, complete with stoppers. So realistic that you're tempted to turn them to see if wine will come out. It is well worth a

trip to the museum to see his carvings firsthand.