Bill Majewski sat in the garage workshop of his home in Duluth’s Smithville neighborhood and fired up a small rotary tool sounding so much like a dental drill that it produced involuntary cringes among guests.
But instead of fillings and caps, Majewski’s work is turning wood into copycats of nature. He calls himself a carver, but he’s also a sculptor, a grinder, a sander, a burner and a painter. He turns pieces of butternut, basswood, cottonwood, tupelo and other woods into wildly realistic replicas.
After more than 35 years of wood carving, he’s advanced to almost all power tools now, and his work is more detailed, more lifelike than ever before.
“I probably won’t touch a knife to this at all,” Majewski said, holding up a partially carved scarlet tanager between passes with the rotary tool, similar to a Dremel, that he was using to line feathers on the bird’s back. “It’s 50,000 rpms.”
Majewski showed visitors a chickadee he carved in the in the early 1980s, after he had taken his first carving class through the Morgan Park Community Schools program.
“At the time it was the best chickadee I could do,” he said. “But now, I think the ones I’m doing are much better. … The methods, the tools, have gotten much better.”
Handwork Handed Down
Majewski said his father could build anything. His mother was a seamstress and expert cake decorator.
“I think it’s in my genes,” Majewski said of working with his hands.
Majewski held up a chunk of old telephone pole he carved and burned into a generic mallard duck shape. It was unpainted, probably pine, but the wood grains seemed to be exploding off the surface with color and detail.
His chickadees look as if they could flitter away at any second. A cardinal stands out with the perfect crimson coloring, a sharp pointed cap and eyes that look like they are staring through you. Mostly it’s birds — hummingbirds and woodpeckers, a belted kingfisher, ducks of all shapes and sizes, a blue jay, shorebirds and tanagers and great horned owls and herons. He’s carved more than 100 loons.
“I really do like birds,” Majewski said. “Unless I’m doing a project for someone, something someone wanted, I usually carve what interests me. That’s nature … a lot of birds.”
But he also has carvings of humpback whales, bears, morel mushrooms, a moose, river otter-shaped letter openers, walleyes, brook trout — some beautifully finished and painted, some unpainted with gorgeous wood grain showing, and others that still need work.
“That one (the moose) I probably started 10 years ago. I keep saying I need to get back to it,” Majewski, 78, said with a laugh.
There are boxes with of unfinished pieces like the moose but plenty of finished pieces too, and not just on his own fireplace mantle, cupboards and workshop shelves. Many are prominently displayed in dens, kitchens and cabins across the Northland.
Name a local conservation group, and Majewski’s work has probably helped raise money for them. He donates pieces that are often auctioned to help fund the nonprofit groups work.
He traded a walleye carving to the walleye association in exchange for the group’s $500 donation to his beloved St. Louis River Alliance. Then they wanted another one so they could use them for their traveling trophies, one for each angler on the winning team of their championship tournament.
It’s a labor of love, but it is labor, with dozens of hours invested in most pieces. A purple finch Majewski worked on during a recent class he took in Iowa (he attends carving classes nearly every year with famed Illinois carver Josh Guge) was not quite finished even after four days of constant attention.
Majewski’s pieces sell at fundraising auctions for upwards of $200. (That’s small potatoes compared to his mentor, Guge, who can fetch $20,000 for his carvings, Majewski notes.) Outside those fundraisers, however, Majewski pieces are rarely for sale. He attends wood carving shows to show off his work, noting he loves the praise from the public and fellow carvers. He has no pieces in galleries or shops, no website and makes no effort to market his work.
He models pieces at the annual October show of the local carvers group, the Knotty Carvers of the North, but most of his pieces have stickers on the bottom that read NFS: Not For Sale.
Still, over the years, word of his work has spread. And when pressed by a friend, he’ll carve and sell a chickadee or other songbird — that’s several days of work — for about $125. Chickadees are about the most popular pieces he produces, Majewski said (“I can’t make them fast enough”), while loons, hummingbirds and cardinals come in close behind.
“I could sell every one I made,” he added. “It comes out to about minimum wage, at best. That’s why it’s a hobby.”
A Conservation Ethic
Majewski has carried a conservation ethic and love for nature all his life. He grew up in a small community in northeastern Wisconsin, Armstrong Creek, on the edge of the Nicolet National Forest, and accompanied his dad on hunting and trapping trips. He continues to take wilderness canoe trips and likes to watch wildlife around his home.
“My dad was really an expert at everything outdoors, hunting and trapping,” Majewski said. “I grew up with a real appreciation for wildlife, for birds, for nature, the outdoors, thanks to him.”
Majewski went on to college and a career that peaked as city planner for Duluth. He retired from that job in 2001 but hasn’t stopped working for his community, staying active in the Morgan Park Community Club and other groups. Majewski spent 12 years serving on the Western Lake Superior Sanitary District Board, helping usher in the era of clean water for the lower St. Louis River.
He’s now in his final year as chairman of the board of the St. Louis River Alliance. The Alliance is the local, nonprofit citizen-driven group that helps promote and coordinate cleanup and restoration efforts along the St. Louis River estuary. Most of all it advocates for the fish, wildlife, birds and people that call the lower river home.
“When people think of Bill Majewski, they think of the river. He’s been part of this (restoration effort) longer than just about anyone else,” said Kris Eilers, executive direct of the Alliance. “Whenever we are in the midst of a project I tell people, you can work hard, but you can never work as hard as Bill Majewski. I don’t know how he has time to do everything he does and still carve like he does.”
When Majewski isn’t working for estuary restoration and improvement, or spending time with his wife, Sue, or combing his neighborhood to pick up trash, he’s carving. Sometimes he combines efforts. Nearly every year he donates a carving to the Alliance to auction off as a fundraiser. A couple years ago the high bidder on a chickadee he carved and painted won with a $240 bid.
“It was a pretty good bidding war between three ladies. One dropped out at $180, I think the other one stopped at $200. … But when it was over I asked them if they would pay their last bid price if I carved them pieces … And they both agreed.”
So those three chickadees brought in $620 for the Alliance.
“I wouldn’t pull out my wallet and donate that kind of money to any group. But if I can do it with this (his carvings), then I feel I’ve contributed something,” he said.