While some artists work with oils or watercolors, Bob Guge and his son, Josh, prefer tupelo and jelutong, soft and comparatively grain-free woods that they carve into lifelike birds and fish.
The elder Guge began carving birds about 25 years ago, converting what had been a hobby into a full-time occupation about four years later.
“My dad had been making wooden decoys,” Bob Guge, 47, recalled. “I tried my hand at it and have never stopped.”
But comparing a Guge bird to a hunter’s decoy is like comparing Michelangelo’s Moses to Grandma Moses. Detailed right down to the feathers and painted in lifelike colors, each creation looks ready to stretch its wings and fly.
Guge also spends about half his carving time turning out less detailed birds with an antique aura about them, which he refers to as “primitives.” These birds are less time consuming to carve, making it cheaper to buy a genuine Guge.
“It’s a completely different market,” Guge said. “The primitives are not just meant to be looked at but actually picked up and handled.”
Guge prefers to sculpt smaller birds in his Sleepy Hollow studio. Finches. Chickadees. Cardinals. Blue jays. Each detailed bird typically takes about a week to carve. Larger birds, such as eagles and falcons, he’ll reproduce in smaller scale.
His work has caught the attention of the Ward Foundation, an international organization devoted to bird and fish carvers. Guge has been crowned world champion four times during international competitions sponsored by the foundation.
His son, Josh, 21, who carves fish, earned “Best of Show” in the Ward competition last April for his coral reef vignette featuring a grouping of vibrantly painted angel fish.
“I started carving when I was about 9,” Josh Guge said, adding that he picked up the craft while watching his father carve. “I started doing little Santa Clauses, then I tried fish and it worked.”
Why fish?
“I just wanted to do something different than Dad,” he said.
Josh Guge’s award-winning angel fish grouping was sold before it was completed. But many of Bob Guge’s birds are sold even before they’re begun, often to repeat customers like the Danbury Mint, which sells cast reproductions to collectors. Following closely in his father’s footsteps, Josh has recently sold a fish grouping to the mint.
“I’m real excited for him,” the elder Guge said, “Typical dad, I guess.”
The Guges sculpt the wood with high-speed power tools, and rely on color photographs in books and outdoor magazines.
“I also spend a lot of time bird-watching,” Bob Guge said. “Just like any wildlife art, you have to see them in action to get the poses as lifelike as possible.”
Bob Guge attributes part of his success to serendipity and good timing. When a national home magazine did a feature article on his house in the early ’80s, the photographer zeroed in on the primitives he had on display. After the magazine hit the stands, demand for his birds kept him busy for the next few years.
“About 90 percent of what I was doing in the ’80s was primitives. By the end of the ’80s the whole wildlife art thing as going like gangbusters,” he said.
Since then the demand for primitives has slackened and the emphasis has shifted from shore birds to songbirds. More primitive carvers have also entered the field. But Bob Guge still enjoys the therapeutic benefits he derives from carving them.
Like any artist with a family to feed, Guge has few regrets when he turns one of his time-consuming creations over to its new owner, although he does admit there were a few birds he wished he had kept.
Has he ever ventured into carving other wildlife?
“Not really,” Guge said, nor does he intend to. “I know birds. Animals are altogether different. They pose differently. They have different musculature. If I did one, it would probably be good, but it wouldn’t be right.”
For Guge, working at home with his eight children coming and going necessitated an eclectic work schedule, which has often carried him far into the night.
“Every time I get up in the morning, I still want to be a carver,” he said. “I can’t think of anything else I’d want to do.”
