Carving come to life

Leo Cormier makes wood come to life.

Ask anyone who has had the chance to see one of his carvings and they will most likely tell you each bird seems to look more realistic than the last.

Cormier, 58, has a unique skill to be able to take a block of wood, draw a few guiding lines from a pattern and turn it into a piece of art that looks like it was picked right from nature. In fact, some people have accused him of just that. Cormier’s favorite carving, which is currently at the Washington State Fair in Puyallup, is of a peregrine falcon. The piece stands almost 35 inches and looks so realistic that on one occasion when his wife, Marcy, took the bird into an office building, one of the workers was appalled that she would have a taxidermy of an endangered species. The reaction turned from being appalled to being in awe as she took a closer look to find the piece was made of wood and paint.

“I want to represent a bird that is as anatomically correct as possible,” Cormier said. “I don’t want it static. I want movement in my pieces. I will always turn the head or give it a gaze. What I would like to do in the future is to have a feather ruffled up. That is challenging, but I like to challenge myself.”

Cormier lives in Hoquiam, but has a lot of family in the Elma area, including his son Wes, a sitting county commissioner. He first took on the challenge of carving birds back in 1981. He painted houses for a living during the day, but his job didn’t exactly satisfy a need for artistic release. When he was a kid, Cormier would whittle for hours and when he got into high school he took a pottery class. Then, one day when he was driving around Leominster, Mass., Cormier found an artistic passion that would stay with him for more than three decades.

“I used to drive by this place and it had carving supplies so I just pulled in there one day and looked around and he had some birds carved and he happened to give classes at night,” Cormier said. “I showed up one time and used to whittle when I was a teenager and it just brought back some memories, I guess and that is how I started.”

His first bird was a miniature loon, but in a few months he began to grow beyond the techniques at the classes and started to take his skill to the next level on his own. He began to contour the body and head of the birds into different positions that would make the bird look as though it was in nature. While it sounds easy to just carve the bird’s head at a different angle, changing the angle means a carver has to modify each feather in the neck area of the bird so the piece keeps a realistic look. He studies the dozens of books he owns on birds almost religiously to make sure every stroke of the knife or drill is perfect to reflect the specific species.

“I’ve always liked birds and just to see a piece come to life as you are making it,” Cormier said. “I’ve always appreciated art. This is my way of showing that appreciation.”

Over the years, Cormier has grown in skill as he has learned new techniques, but his collection of tools has grown from just a knife. He now uses several electric tools to rough out the bird’s shape, before using what looks like a dentist’s drill to put in the smallest of details. A wood burner is used to add some texture for feather lines and then he has an airbrush to put a perfect splash of color before he begins work with a fine paintbrush.

While he has always continued to have a love for carving birds, Cormier has taken a step away from the finely detailed carving to detailed work of a different sort on a few occasions. Placed with care on a table he made in the Cormier’s kitchen are what he considers special pieces. There’s a pair of car door handles crafted out of wood and vases he turned on a lathe. There’s a carving of a western tanager that won grand champion for woodworking at the Grays Harbor County Fair last month. The bright orange and yellow bird was a wedding gift for Wes, but it was loaned back to Leo for his first entry into the fair for woodworking.

Cormier’s carvings have even become popular enough that some people have begun to commission him for a specific carving of a certain bird. It isn’t about the price tag for Cormier, as he is more than willing to part with his art as a gift to family. He feels each piece is like an extension of himself, not just because Cormier spends anywhere from 35 to 300 hours on each piece, but because many of the birds come from the carver’s personal experiences. Whether it’s seeing a mountain bluebird on a hike in the Cascades or viewing a greater yellowlegs at the Shorebird Festival in Hoquiam, many of Cormier’s pieces look as though they are plucked from nature because, in many ways, they are taken from nature.

“I’m just fascinated with birds,” Cormier said. “I go to the Shorebird Festival and to see something that I’ve carved in a viewfinder is amazing.”

The one project Cormier would like to do in the future is a great blue heron. He has already created the pattern to do the carving, but the cost of wood and the amount of material he would need to make the piece has kept him from beginning the carving.

Even before he has finished a scissor-tailed flycatcher that he has put many hours into, Cormier has already turned his mind to imagining the next project, which will be a red-tailed hawk. His newest project will take around 300 hours to complete, but he can see in his mind that it will be worth every minute.

“I love seeing a piece finished,” Cormier said. “I have a satisfaction looking at it and then I just move on to the next one. I see it finished before I start it so that inspires me to get to that stage before it is finished. I like to see my pieces come to life.”