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M a r c h 2 , 2 0 1 1 • Vo l . 4 • N o . 9 • w w w.T h e W e e k l y S u n . c o m
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s t a n l e y • F a i r f i e l d • S h o sh o n e • P i c a b o Free Children’s Art Festival in Hailey this Saturday
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read about it on PaGe 3
Carter continues to carve his unique characters
Glenn Carter has made a living carving his unique wooden barstools. KAREN BOSSICK/TWS
Photos & Story By KAREN BOSSICK
F COURTESY PHOTO: KIRSTEN SHULTZ
Three nights left! By KAREN BOSSICK
T
he ringing of the cell phone at the beginning of “Dead Man’s Cell Phone” ushers audience members into a surreal world. It’s a night of pondering such questions as whether cell phones are bringing us together or keeping us apart. And it’s a night of just plain fun. The play, presented by if You Go the Company of • “Dead Man’s Cell Fools, kicks off Phone” abruptly with • Tonight through the decision of Friday, March 4; 7 a young woman p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays, 8 named Jean p.m. Friday. to answer the • Liberty Theatre at cell phone of a Main and Bullion man who has streets in Hailey. just died next • Tickets: $28 for to her in a café. adults, $20 for Before she seniors 62 and older knows it, she’s and $10 for students ushered into 18 and under. the sometimes • The ten seats on bewildering the front row go for world of his $10 each night. And humorously groups of six or more socially misfit may purchase $20 family. tickets (students still Beth Hiles, get in for $10 each). who plays the • Tickets are available sweet-natured by calling 208-578Jean, engages 9122. the audience with her expressive facial changes, especially as she learns to her horror what kind of business the dead man was involved in and as she undertakes a bizarre trip to heaven—or is it hell? Suzanne Gerlits, the dead man’s frosty mother, is hysterical as the eulogist you don’t want at your funeral. “Now everyone wears black as a matter of course,” she observes. “We are in a state of perpetual mourning—but for what?” Jennifer Jacoby Rush, the dead man’s brassy mistress, plays an engrossing femme fatale. Christine Leslie, the dead man’s widow, provides a humorous look of a woman finally being accepted by her mother-in-law only after her husband’s death. Duke Lafon is endearing as the sad sack brother who was named Dwight only because Mom felt sorry for the name. Even Joel Vilinsky, who plays the dead man, does a vivacious job of looking back on a life before lobster
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or Glenn Carter, life is one big zoo—a “Ketchum zoo,” as he calls it. Carter has brought into the world a merry-go-round of whimsical carousel animals and zebra and giraffe behinds crafted into barstools with a few swipes of his power handtools. And many of those creatures now live in places as far away as Japan. “I’ve made armoires for TVs, carved beds and totems. But, always, whimsical,” he said. “I have a thought and I make it—who knows where it’s going to go.” The son of a Sunshine Cookie salesman in Butte, Mont., Carter found his calling in life when he begged for and received a knife for his sixth birthday—a knife that his father purposely dulled so his son wouldn’t hurt himself. “From then on all I ever got for birthdays and Christmases were carving tools—sharp ones,” Carter recalled. Carter got an arts degree at Mills College in Oakland and taught art for 15 years at Chabot College near San Francisco. He moved to Sun Valley “lock, stock and cat” in 1984 after he decided “this is home” while visiting friends who had moved here. And his foray into adapting the posteriors of beasts into furniture began when fellow artist Judy Whitmyre asked him to make some original barstools that he ended up creating atop horse hooves. The “zoo guy,” as he’s become known, carved the cowboy in The Kneadery restaurant as a self-portrait and then added a carousel horse, which the late owner Michael Martin paid for with a month’s worth of breakfasts. And he carved 3,086 barstools featuring the heinies of zebras, giraffes, jaguars, parrots and gators for Rainforest Café’s 49 restaurants throughout the world after one of its buyers saw Carter’s creations in a Neiman Marcus Christmas catalog. “For 10 years that’s all I did. I had a couple people helping me and we’d turn
out 20 in 20 days,” Carter reminisced. Inspired by the iconic carousel that stood as the centerpiece of Butte’s Columbia Gardens until it burned in 1973, Carter creates his menagerie out of basswood grown in North and South Carolina. It’s what carousel animals were carved out of at the turn of the 20th century, said Carter, who has restored many a carousel figure, and the wood has stood the test of time. At 72, Carter shows no signs of hanging up his carving tools. He maintains a busy work schedule in an old white and green barn next to the Wood River Sustainability Center in Hailey as Titus, a St. Bernard he rescued from a puppy mill in Bend, Ore., lies at his feet. He just finished up several barstools featuring the “seats” of desperados wearing holsters, floozies in net stockings and donkeys with tails for a Mexican restaurant in Tennessee. And he’s working on
“I have a thought and I make it—who knows where it’s going to go.” –Glenn Carter a razorback hog holding up a glass coffee table for an Arkansas football fan who ordered five barstools to go with it for his new home. In his “spare time,” Carter carves to suit himself. Those creations include a flasher, who opens his coat to reveal a couple bottles of wine and wine glasses; a rocking sleigh sporting a polar bear; and a life-sized mustang just looking to spring out of its stable. His dream: to carve Pegasus, the winged horse of Greek mythology. “I want to see if I have it in me to make the wings fluid, if I can make it look as if tws it’s taking flight.”
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