Decades worth of work will be up for auction in a couple of months.
87-year-old Air Force Veteran Richard Young has created a vast array of artwork handcrafted from wood, ranging from busts of Abraham Lincoln and Albert Einstein to cowboy hats and urns.
Richard and his significant other Virginia are planning to move out of the state, and instead of bringing his art with him, Richard has joined forces with Gallery 10 Auction House to sell itall.
Richard tells us his love of the craft began at a very early age.
“When I was just a kid, I had found a little knife,” he recalled. “I sharpened it, and I had been cutting wood ever since.”
But his foray into the artistic side began after his retirement in his 60s.
Looking around the room that houses all of his projects highlights just how many things interest Richard.
“I like dragons a lot,” he explained. “I like to do the busts. If I can get enough pictures of a person, I can seem to make my bust look like the picture. I like jewelry boxes, I got plates and I do chip carving. And I do all kinds of stuff. Everything but birds and fish.”
Narrowing down a favorite piece could be like picking a favorite child, but when asked, Richard didn’t hesitate to point to a picnic basket he created.
The basket itself appears as an intricate weaving of wicker, while the lid showcases grapes, vines, and leaves.
The detail is so fine, at first glance, one may think it was an actual wicker basket.
Another piece that Richard is very proud of is a six-sided urn, where he utilized a specific style of carving.
“That’s called chip carving. I just drew the pattern on the urn and you just cut the little pieces out one piece time,” he explained. “The hard part with that one was to make the urn itself. And I worked and I worked on that.”
Richard estimated that urn took about four months to complete.
The hundreds of others in his home will be auctioned of on May 31st, the day before the Garden Faire Extraordinaire.
Ted Radtke, the owner of Gallery 10 has been a part of many auctions, but this collection is something special.
“I was thoroughly impressed, to say the least,” he said. “I’m not an artist by any stretch of the imagination. So to see somebody take just a block of wood, so to speak, and transform it into an image or a form like that is just impressive to me.”
When asked about the price he would expect some of these pieces to go for, Radtke said it’s hard to tell.
“These are one-of-a-kind pieces of art, so it’s kind of hard to put a put a price tag on it,” he noted. “If I had to put a price tag on it, you know, it would be something like priceless.”
Richard looked around his room as he recalled the hours upon hours put into his artwork.
“It’s made my life special just to see what I’ve done,” he said. “I mean, it. I’m probably my best, my favorite fan.”
The details of the auction have not yet been ironed out, but the date of May 31st was confirmed earlier this week.
