“He does not see the world like normal people do.”

Those are words said by Mary Dion to describe her husband, Dave.

For the past 57 years, the craftsman has utilized his extraordinary imagination to create over 4,600 wooden caricatures of everyday people and other interesting carvings that comprise his personal collection.

On his Facebook page Dion defines himself as having an “art attack,” which is “the overwhelming feeling of having so many creative ideas at once and not enough time to do them.”

“I call myself a scavenger,” Dion said. “I’m always looking for something to create with wood, and where I find it can be anywhere as long as I feel it inspires me. It can be any image or any person. I once carved an old electrical stove out of wood.”

All in the family

Dion says he was “somewhat of a child prodigy.” Raised in New Jersey, he was brought up in a family with generations of artists, singers, musicians and craftsmen. His mother taught him how to draw circles, squares and rectangles at age 4. That advanced his skills into making cars, trucks and trains out of clay. Dion still has a tanker truck he made from a block of clay that is sitting “somewhere” in his collection.

“When I was 8, I took piano lessons and learned oil painting by a professional,” he said. “I also learned how to use a potter’s wheel and a kiln. My mom was a gifted artist and she held adult art classes and she taught kids in our basement, which was sort of like a forerunner for day camp.”

When he was 11, Dion learned how to make objects out of ceramics at his grandparents’ home in upstate New York.

“Their home had been standing near the Battle of Ticonderoga (the first victory in the Revolutionary War by the colonists over the British) and we found a ton of arrowheads there,” he said “I became very interested in the Native American history and culture, which I have aspired to learn more about since then.

“While I was there, my grandfather gave me a set of woodcarving tools that were 135 years old. There were 7-inch chisels and other instruments with different shaped blades that were used to form sculptures out of raw blocks of wood.”

Wise about wood

Woodcarving became the passion for this now retired postal worker. Before moving to Lehighton five years ago, Dion lived in Saylorsburg and had a workshop that was like no other.

“It was 24 x 24 in size, a two-stories workshop with an elevator,” he said. “I installed a winch that lifted large pieces of wood — delivered by trucks — that I brought up to the second floor in the elevator. I had quite a collection of power tools. One was a 400-pound band saw that could cut through a 23-inch circle of wood.”

Dion uses his hand tools with surgical precision to carve intricately detailed figurines from different types of wood that are selected from his extensive knowledge of trees.

“Pine is very soft wood to work with,” he said. “I have also used walnut, cherry and oak that bring with them their own special challenges with their textures, grains and colors. But my favorite wood is sassafras because of its natural oil in the wood that has a wonderful bouquet of scent that adds to the ambience of the pieces I carve.”

If a project requires adding color, Dion uses mineral spirits and tubes of oil paint.

“The spirits sink into the wood and that makes for better application of the paint, whereas using water or anything water based will make the wood swell,” he said.

Size, safety, selection

Dion has carved figurines as tall as 18 inches and as small as 1.25 inches, and says the larger the piece the easier to carve.

“I can show more detail in larger carvings,” he said. “With the very small ones, it’s harder to control what I want my tools to do.”

Dion pays close attention to the ergonomics of his craft, which is the relationship of the woodcarver to the wood.

“I’m very safety conscious; in 57 years I have not cut myself once,” he said. “Much of that has to with how I hold my carving tools that require I change hand and finger positions depending upon what tool I’m using.”

Dion’s carvings of original figurines include his poker player that took him 203 hours to complete. He titled it, “I’ll Take Two,” meaning taking two cards from the deck to build a good poker hand.

“I craft originals,” he said. “I don’t do Disney characters because then you get into dealing with their copyright laws.”

He sells his projects by commission and he also gives them away as gifts that include handmade Christmas ornaments.

Paying it forward

When he’s not in his shop trying to figure out how he’s going to make all of his ideas into wood, Dion teaches woodcarving at Northampton Community College.

“I’m excited not only about the future of woodcarving, but any type of art that many young people have been taking interest in,” Dion said. “I have a student who built a ceramic guitar body and wants to learn how to make the wooden pieces necessary to make the guitar into a playable instrument.”

Just as his family members passed along to him their love for art, this lifelong learner believes that it’s important to pay forward whatever knowledge we have.

“It’s part of our legacy,” he said. “For me, it’s to give what I know to inspire future generations to use their imaginations to create their original artwork. What good is it if what we know isn’t given to our young people?”

Dion has been carving his own legacy for more than a half-century.

He will live on forever in his creations displayed in present and future homes.

His website is DaveDionWoodcarving.com. He can be contacted at dave.dionwoodcarving@gmail.com or via his Facebook page.