Woodcarver Keeps Chipping Away
It doesn’t take much to get Keith Hollenbeck to show you his collection of wood carvings.
The tough part is finding the time to see them all.
“I’m glad to show them,” the 81-year-old Valley resident says in his deep, gravelled voice.
Since he sold his jukebox, video game and vending machine leasing business in the 1980s, Hollenbeck has created about 3,000 sculptures and carvings.
They line his shop. They decorate his house. They’re everywhere. Some of his carvings even move - like the duck that when pushed with a pole, waddles along on floppy rubber feet.
“There’s oceans of it (his craft work),” he says, digging through one of the many boxes filled with carvings housed in his shop. “Wait, I want to show you something… “
Some of his creations are wooden sculptures - like a three-dimensional eagle with inlaid bronze-colored eyes, or a tired-looking mule.
Many, though, are framed carvings made to hang on walls.
They are delicate, see-through pictures made with a scroll saw. Its blade is so thin, Hollenbeck picks at it as if it were a guitar string. “See how tight that is?”
He has a lot of old-West-themed works; Buffalo Bill, shepherds with sheep, Native American hunters. Once in awhile, he has relatives paint them. Most often, he burns in textures or leaves them plain.
Making the hair-fine cuts takes patience. “You have to watch what you’re doing, you have to concentrate. You look at it so long your eyes are liable to cross.”
Each time Hollenbeck slices out a section, he has to disconnect the saw blade and thread it back through the wood.
Once, while making a carving of a freight train, he had to disconnect the blade 300 times.
“You have to be pretty desperate for something to do, I guess,” he jokes.
Hollenbeck usually gives away his creations as presents to relatives.
“It’s embarrassing to sell them. I work for 10 to 15 hours, then someone offers $20 for it,” he says.
Hollenbeck discovered the hobby after he sold the jukebox business he owned for 40 years, Hollenbeck’s Music. He wanted to keep busy. “It’s a wonderful thing for him to do,” says his wife, Phyllis Hollenbeck. “He’s not one for reading, and not one for every television show.”
Hollenbeck still loves jukeboxes. He is especially fond of a 1936 model that glows purple, yellow and red when fired up. It plays old records, but sounds hi-fidelity even today. “Now isn’t that wonderful for a 1936?” Hollenbeck asks after putting on some frenetically happy ragtime music.
But most of his days are spent in the shop, carving sculptures or sawing the intricate pictures he draws with a blade.
He’ll keep sawing, cutting and giving them away. But he also holds on to many of his favorites.
“I have an awful time keeping up with the dusting,” Phyllis says. “We’re about to run out of wall space now.”
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo
MEMO: Saturday’s People is a regular Valley Voice feature profiling remarkable individuals in the Valley. If you know someone who would be a good profile subject, please call editor Mike Schmeltzer at 927-2170.