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Jon Ström About the Artist contact_jon@earthlink.net |
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More About Jon Strom Jon Strom carved his first bowl and spoon in a junior high art class. He grew up in a little Minnesota town on the prairie; no, not lake Woe-Be-Gone, a farming community called Worthington, in southern Minnesota. Wood was a scarce commodity on the prairie, and thus a fascinating substance to Jon. He got the wood for his first sculpture, a drummer boy, from the local lumber yard. In 1966 he left the farm for Kansas and McPherson College. In 1974 he went to Southwest University in Minnesota, where he studied for a degree in art education. Jon moved north to the woods in 1980 to a chunk of land he had bought previously with a little stream and a lot of balsam fir trees. He looked at the building materials available and the most logical one was logs. The previous year he had learned log building from Ron Heim, who hired him to help build their house in Kelliher, Minnesota. Jon was a quick learner luckily, as he tells his students, the his first log he scribed had eight notches along it! Jon went on to build a log sauna then a house on his land, quickly followed by a shop and a three story garage. He now teaches log building at North House Folk School. Jon is part Swedish. His great grandad said when they first came over and homesteaded in Minnesota, "We're Americans now," and left all the traditional Scandinavian skills behind. A friend of Jon's, Dell Stubbs, who is a skilled wood carver and knife maker from Pinewood, asked him one day why he didn't make his spoons out of bent branches, since they'd be stronger that way. Jon couldn't believe he hadn't thought of that before! Turns out Dell got that idea from a book that he introduced to Jon. The book was by Willy Sunquist, a traditional Scandinavian wood carver. The book taught Jon the green wood carving technique that he uses for all his spoons and bowls. Several years later he met Jogi Sunquist, Willy's son and a brilliant Scandinavian carving artist in his own right, who was offering classes. Jogi's class helped to polish the skills Jon had gained from Willy's book. Jon is passing these skills along as well, through classes at North House Folk School. Since that junior high art class Jon's main passion has been for sculpture. Most of his sculptures depict human figures, and emotions. "Mother and Child" is just one of many. Carved from a walnut stump that grew with three trunks, it depicts a seated mother embracing a child. He had the stump in storage for about twenty years before he saw what was in it; the mother and child emerged from the shape and character of the wood. Often the inspiration for sculptures works this way; the figures are part of the wood's nature and calling to be unveiled. Jon still lives in his log home in northern Minnesota, making wood chips and beautiful carvings. |