Home > Carving > Arkansas Traveler: Work of an Itinerant Carver
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Arkansas Traveler: Work of an Itinerant Carver
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| In this photo from 1958, Rupert Kreider is shown working on one of his relief carving rural landscapes. The Arkansas itinerant supported himself with sales of carvings, plus odd jobs. |
During his lifetime, Rupert Kreider was known as a "free spirit." The Arkansas itinerant supported himself through sales of his scenic woodcarvings, with the Squirrel Trading Post becoming his de facto gallery.
Born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in 1897, Kreider told a friend that he left home at the age of 14 because he didn't like farm life and that he set off "just walking and carving."
Kreider's carvings incorporated intricate detail. The largest and most complex scenes also reveal his knack for creating the illusion of spatial depth through the use of distant "vanishing points" and repetitive motifs that diminish in size and seem to disappear in the distance. Artists have used such techniques for centuries to create perspective, but more often in paintings and drawings than in relief carvings.
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"Church" is a Kreider carving from around 1960. The windows are carved all the way through, with more wood removed from around the openings on the reverse side to enhance the illusion of spatial depth.
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By the 1950s, Kreider was leading a modified hobo existence, drifting from one place to another and sustaining himself through odd jobs and the sale of his carvings. About 1955, he arrived at the Squirrel Trading Post in St. Joe, Arkansas, a souvenir and curio shop that sold his smaller, simpler carvings. The proprietor's family bought his larger pieces for themselves.
Kreider made sporadic visits to the Squirrel Trading Post from the 1950s to the early 1970s. He died in 1983 and, because he had served in the U.S. Army Air Corps, was given a veteran's burial in the National Cemetery in Little Rock, Arkansas.
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| The Squirrel Trading Post in St. Joe, Arkansas acted as Kreider's gallery; the proprietor's family also bought much of his work. |
"People who knew Kreider have remarked on his ability to live according to his own terms, characterizing him as a 'free spirit' who honored personal inclinations, disdained material wealth and focused on the present moment," said Barbara Luck, Colonial Williamsburg curator of paintings and sculpture, reacting to an exhibit that was held at Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum in Colonial Williamsburg in 2003. The exhibit included eight elaborate farmscapes and other rural scenes carved in relief and a lamp base made from a cypress knee carved in the round. "Perhaps the artist's knack for creating the illusion of spatial depth in his carvings extended to his personal philosophy, enabling him to prioritize his needs, to take life's twists and turns in stride, and to 'put things in perspective.'"
Photos by Camera Work, Inc. and Ron Thomas