Carver interprets beliefs

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A carver releases the form dormant in a stone, piece of wood, marble - or bone.

Stan Hill came to carving late in life, but he's mastered the art of releasing the spirit from deer and moose antlers in ways that are traditional yet innovative. And the result is sculptures that are both delicately detailed and larger than life.

A retrospective of Hill's works - more than 40 carvings in deer and moose antlers - is on view until Sept. 28 at the Woodland Cultural Centre in Brantford. The Spirit Released, A Circle Complete: The Art of Stan Hill is a collaboration between the Woodland Museum and the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York.

Most of Hill's subject matter is part of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) tradition. Some of his most expressive pieces are those of the creation story and the Three Sisters: the Corn Spirit, Bean Spirit and Squash Spirit, sculptures that are at once female forms and plants of special significance to the Haudenosaunee culture. And they are also the main crops of the region that Stan Hill's family farmed when he was growing up.

Originally from the Six Nations Reserve at Oshweken, Hill was born in 1921 and spent most of his adult life as an ironworker in New York State. During World War II he was a deep-sea diver in the navy and after the war he had his own business in ironwork. But it wasn't until the 1970s that he began to work in bone, thus reviving the ancient artform of Iroquois bone carving.

The works on exhibit range from carved hair-combs-testaments to Hill's fine workmanship - through representations of turtles, bears, eagles to images of the cycle of nature, perhaps his most touching pieces. Some of the pieces are carved from antlers, others from vertebrae. There is also humor in a number of the pieces. For example, there is the Penguin that Hill has carved out of a beaver skull. The spirit of a penguin released from the skull of a beaver. Such non-traditional expression says a lot about Hill's range and his eye for what lies buried in bone.

Hill described his relationship to his materials and his art: "When I started my first carving, it created within me a deep sense of awe . . . there was a rapport between myself and the carving on those antlers which I could not deny; it seemed bigger than myself."

The exhibit is accompanied by a handsome, full-color catalogue.