KALAHEO — In a garden full of singing birds, two tea cup-sized kittens and a talkative puppy, a dark door leads to an unassuming woodturning workshop and gallery. Les Ventura, Marine Corps veteran-turned-artist, has spent five decades transforming chunks of
KALAHEO — In a garden full of singing birds, two tea cup-sized kittens and a talkative puppy, a dark door leads to an unassuming woodturning workshop and gallery.
Les Ventura, Marine Corps veteran-turned-artist, has spent five decades transforming chunks of discarded trunks and logs into refined bowls and elliptical boxes so light and shiny that their mother tree would gasp at the beauty Ventura has artfully coaxed from her branches.
From his hand-built home on the ridge above Kalaheo, Ventura spends hours seizing form from nature, settling for nothing less than perfection.
He got his start in wood shop at Waimea High School, and by his junior year, Ventura said he had gained enough seniority to use the only lathe at the school.
“I made my bowl from monkeypod wood and was astounded at what I had created,” he said. “I still have it.”
Ventura walks into his underground gallery, housing a multitude of perfected wooden pieces behind glass. He pulls out the monkeypod bowl. “You could take that thing to war,” he laughs.
Looking around the master’s wood shop, his high school trophy stands somewhat out of place but is clearly an endearing memento for Ventura.
When the great Renaissance artist Michelangelo once described the process of marble sculpting, he said that it was not the artist that gave form and life to stone, but the stone which revealed the life hidden inside it. Ventura, holding a raw piece of koa wood from a crowded stack that borders his entire shop, described the same process.
“This is already God’s creation. It’s not something you need to try to do, it’s already there,” he said. “You figure it out by working with it. I never start out with a design, it comes out.”
Ventura’s dedication to the immense time commitment required to bring shine from roughness, symmetry from raw form, grace from strict density is the mark of a monk as much as an artist.
“I don’t approve of imperfection. And I don’t rush,” Ventura explained. “I am completely content during each stage of the process. I enjoy each stage and it is a meditation for me. I never am thinking how I wish I could get to the next part of the process.”
With hundreds of “works-in-process” waiting for Ventura’s attentive hand, the energy of potential fills his workshop.
“I’ve completed thousands of pieces, but each one has my heart in it,” he said.
Because Ventura feels emotionally connected to his work, he prefers selling it personally so he still feels connected.
Ventura relates a story of selling eight pieces to an O‘ahu gallery. The next week, they wanted 10 more.
“I’ve sold my work before, but doing it this way, without direct contact, not knowing where the pieces would eventually end up, I felt just heartbroken,” he said. “I told them that I couldn’t send 10 more until I recovered from the first eight!”
One of the stunning elements in Ventura’s work is the highlight of pattern and color, naturally occurring in the wood. Called spaulding, Ventura said as the wood ages it begins to change.
“In its decay, you see its real beauty,” he said.
Ventura’s work has won awards and accolades from Veterans’ Creative Arts competition, the Kaua‘i Museum and the Kaua‘i Society of Artists.
The amazing shine of the wood comes from the labor-intensive process of sanding. What one would swear was lacquer finish comes after using 350, 400, 600, 1500 grade sandpapers. The last stage includes hand rubbing with a bandana and clear shoe polish.
Picking up a finished piece may be amazingly light in weight but is dense with feeling.
“These aren’t for food,” Ventura said, describing the difference between his art pieces and other functional wooden dishes. That almost goes without saying when surrounded by the obvious artistry involved in creating them.
Having built his house and studio in 1967, Ventura has continually surrounded himself with the thing he loves most: “the land, the ‘aina.”
“If I get tired of the studio, I come back here and pull some weeds,” he said of his extensive garden, featuring kou, koa, mango, plumeria, camphor and Covlvelia trees. “I love my life.”
To visit the artist’s studio, call Les Ventura at 332-8216 or write to him at P.O. Box 462, Kalaheo, HI 96741.
