Hubby brag: Tim the Carver.

An article came out about my hubby today that had (almost) nothing to do with pit bulls. Almost! We can't get away from them completely. The sfgate piece was about what Tim calls his "real job."

SFGate

Some may know that Tim is a wood sculptor and he's usually creating dog portraits in between his never-ending duties with BR, but you may not know that when he first told me that he wanted to carve dogs for a living, I broke down and cried. ("You want to do WHAT? How will we survive? - Sob")

Then again, I have a feeling Tim may have wanted to cry when I told him we were going to start a pit bull advocacy group. Ha! Oh blissful ignorance.

Our girl Sally was his first model. Like so many pit bulls, it's hard not to marvel at her gorgeous body - especially for a trained artist like Tim who has a keen appreciation for form. He chased her around for days on end when he decided to carve her, studied and measured every nuance of her frame, then he got to work. Once his carving was done, it was pretty clear that he'd found his medium, and that I didn't have to cry anymore.

He still struggles to get his "real work" done though; each piece takes up to 700 hours to complete, and those hours are usually spent very late in the evening, long after the phones have quieted and BR's work is done. With all the recent pit bull-related dramas and demands, that means he's usually only able to get two to three pieces done a year. Although he's hell bent on increasing his numbers in 2010 ... Once the barn is ready and the dog fight busts slow down just a wee bit, that is. Riiight. Like our Pit Ed classes, there's a wait list for Tim's art and he's always a little bit stressed about keeping a healthy balance. Such is life, eh?

Photo below; Anne Truitt



Then there are always the foster dogs who live nearly full time in his shop and bring a mix of big fun and major frustration. They help themselves to wood chip chew toys and run zoomies around his workbench. He's gotten used to setting his chisels down to wipe up pee or to mitigate a rowdy play session. And no, so far nobody's been accidentally stabbed by a sharp chisel, although that always amazes me considering the mix of rowdy dogs and sharp carving tools in a relatively tight space. Occasionally the dogs do something really naughty though, like steal an important drawing and turn it into confetti. Those are the days that we get really reeeally excited about watching the barn's (slow but steady) construction progress, altho even when the barn is up and running, I'm betting there will always be a dog in Tim's shop, at least for a small part of the day.

Right: This is a carving of Jane Berkey's girl Petal. Painted by the inimitable artist, Pam Hessey

I was peacock proud when this article came out about Tim as the artist rather than Tim the pit bull guy. It feels great to see him appreciated for his other, artsy fartsy side. Yep, that's my guy.

Here's Tim's website for more peeks at his late night creations.