Narnia trail welcomes latest arrival

IF you go down to Kilbroney Forest then you should be prepared to meet a six foot tall beaver which, thanks to the efforts of artist Richard Kelly, you could very easily be mistaken to believe has hopped straight out of the pages of C.S Lewis beloved fantasy series The Chronicles of Narnia.

The beaver, or as he is referred to in the first book in the series “Mr Beaver” is the passion project of the Mayo born bespoke artisan joiner who won a tender from the council to construct a number of new amenities for the trail located in Kilbroney forest for the enjoyment of all those who want to imagine they have stepped through a magic wardrobe into the dreamscape of one of the most acclaimed writers the province of Ulster has ever produced.

According to Richard Mr Beaver, who was one of the first characters introduced by Lewis in his renowned fantasy series who along with his beloved spouse Mrs Beaver afforded the four Pevensie children with sustenance before they embarked upon there many long days of trials and tribulation in the fabled land of Narnia, took no less than ten days to transfer through the lens of his minds eye onto a stump of yellow pine which was felled within the very glades of Kilbroney Forest itself.

No Blueprint

“I am finished with the statue of MR Beaver. What I have carved is a 360 degree full sculpture. I took me ten days to carve him and it is a mixture of a chainsaw carving and a hand carving. I have also painted him in colour.”

Richard provided a comprehensive overview of the creative process that was involved in brining the vision that Lewis’s would have had of Mr Beaver on the page to life in the form of six-foot-tall wooden sculpture, stating that when it comes to a project like this there really is “no blueprint”, “you just have to wing it.”

“When I started sculpting Mr Beaver, I had a rough idea of how he was suppose to look and I took into consideration the Narnia story and how Mr Beaver makes a meal for the children. But really and truly though there is no blueprint, you are kind of just winging it when you are carving him.

“He is sculpted from a stump of yellow pine that was felled in Kilbroney forest. The tree was dead before it was felled and then it was down for about two years. It was well seasoned and perfect for carving. I had looked at beech trees here in Kilbroney park but it was too wet and not well seasoned enough.

“With the creative process you have a rough idea of how the beaver should look so you are getting the proportions right, the head, the arms, the legs and then it is transferring this on to a piece of wood. You look at your own body and your own arms and legs and you know where it is you need to go next. So your own body becomes the reference point for the piece that you are sculpting.

“With the beaver you are also trying to give it a humanist type of approach but also make it look like an animal, because it is a six foot talking beaver holding a pie so this is a fine line to tread.

“You do need to know how to sculpt but I know sculpting fairly well. Whether this be a piece of wood or clay or whatever it is you may be working with. In this case I needed to know the wood fairly well as you can be redirected fairly quickly if there is a nought in a piece of wood you have to work around this. Also if there is a piece of wood that is not stable enough you have to dig this out and then adapt the design. For example, when I was carving Mr Beaver his legs were about four inches shorter but proportionally it did not look right so I had to drop the legs another four inches just to get him looking right. So their was a lot of head scratching and standing back.”

Right tools for the job

As is the case with any kind of practical undertaking having the innate skill to do the job correctly is only one half of the equation, the other being ensuring that you have the right tools at your disposal to bring you artistic vision to life.

This is a fact that is not lost of Richard who for this project brought with him a a wide arsenal of saws , chisels and grinders to craft his wooden magnum opus.

“You also need to know the tools you are working with. For the beaver I used a Husqvarna 445 saw and a Husqvarna 135 saw. The bigger saw would be used for taking away the bigger heavy material like big blocks of wood and then I have a carving bar for the 135 so this is a shorter nose tip bar that you put on the saw and this is for getting into the piece for finer detail.

“I also have grinders with an Arbotech turbo planer disc for shaping with the blades on it. You put this on to a four inch grinder and this helps you shape. You then go down to working with nose files and chisels for even more shaping in finer detail whenever the body itself looks right.

“The details of the hair went in with a gauge chisel, it was not a machine that did this it was a process of tapping these hairs in one by one. If you can imagine it takes three taps to craft one hair. You start of with one tap and then it is a kind of medium, and then you hit the last tap hard so this just kind of pops the piece out. There are thousands of these hairs on it. The beaver itself would have been grand just without these hairs but these hairs give the sculpture more authenticity.

“When it came to the painting process, I first sprayed the whole piece in white vinegar to kill any kind of bacteria or mould. I then put another double dose of fungal wash on. I then applied another layer that treats in for wet rot and also treats it for wood boring insects. Once all this is done I then started painting him with acrylic paint to paint in all the little details.

“I then use a sealer like Osmo oil or V33 high protection which is a water based protector. It is recommended that you put on two layers but I always put on three coats because this is not a piece that is going to sit on someone's mantle piece for the rest of their life. It is going to be interacted with and it is going to be touched and people are going to climb it so it has to be durable.”