“My grandfather made wine, and he would get grapes in wooden crates,” said artist, Nick Di Mona.
“Those crates were my practice and inspiration. I started carving on the end pieces when I was 10, and I knew, just knew, I would be a woodworker.”
At 72, Nick Di Mona has been carving, cutting, and turning wrens, herons, bowls, vases, and objects d’art from blocks of wood for over 60 years. On Saturday, The SOBA Gallery in Bluffton hosts over 200 of Di Mona’s sculptures and turnings. The exhibit runs through the end of August.
Di Mona grew up in Camden, New Jersey, helping his grandfather with the family business. By middle school, he had been carving on grape crates long enough to know he had a talent for using his hands and an eye for creating realistic sculptures.
“My guidance teacher told me that woodworking and trades were phasing out,” recalled Di Mona. “That there were going to be a only few woodworkers needed to make original prototypes, and then everything would be mass produced.”
He heeded the guidance counselor’s insight and became a technical illustrator for RCA. There, he worked his way into top projects for the military and found he was really, really good at transforming his drawings into 3D products. Eventually, Di Mona went to school to be a commercial artist while concurrently working at RCA.
In 1996, he retired and went to work full-time as a woodworker. That move quickly paid off. In 1998, he became president of the carving club in Homosassa, Florida. In 2007, Di Mona was elected president of the wood turners club in Inverness, Florida. For 25 years, Di Mona has been enjoying a successful second career as the woodworker he always wanted to be.
Di Mona’s work is well conceived and executed. In particular, he has an eye for birds, each species crafted to scale, feathers burned and painted in accordance to the animal’s physiology.
“I spent a lot of time watching birds,” said Di Mona. “I bought photo books and learned their anatomy. I know their, primary, secondary, tertiary feathers, and so much more, to carve them.”
Di Mona’s sculpture of a pair of house wrens, “Courtship,” is representative of his work.
Created to scale, the pair displays the craftsmanship in each of his pieces. Typically, he begins with a block of basswood, and uses a pencil directly on the block to rough out a figure. With carving tools, he winnows away until a distinct figure emerges. Di Mona then employs a series of burning tool to create fine lines and contours before painting the sculpture.
“I don’t play golf, don’t hang out in bars, this is my love,” emphasized Di Mona. “They might be small, but each bird has between 30 and 40 hours of work in them.”
In his garage workshop shop, Di Mona also turns bowls, vases, and creatively shaped containers from wood he and his friends have salvaged from hurricanes in Georgia and Florida. The process works like this: on his lathe, Di Mona attaches a block of wood. The lathe then spins rapidly, and he uses different kinds of gouges and turning tools to create shapes and spaces.
One standout is a rocket ship-shaped container comprised of six individually turned pieces seamlessly assembled. The top, when removed, reveals the empty space inside. Containers like these are hits with his grandchildren and adults who enjoy a bit of whimsy in their lives.
“I’ve built roll top desks, shelves, rocking chairs, cradles,” mused Di Mona. “People go to college and graduate with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt and can’t find a job, but going into trades, word working, cabinet making, plumbing, you can make a good living. Skilled trades really teach problem solving you can use in every day situations. I like that I can use those skills to create art and make practical pieces.
This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Nicholas Di Mona is introducing Bluffton to the 'Wonderful World of Wood' at SOBA Gallery
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