by Anne Hansen

Jim Gerwing’s resumé is long and varied. He is well-known in James Bay as board member and prolific writer of the Beacon.

Jim is also versed in several languages, and has degrees in history, philosophy, education, and theology. At age 14, he left home to enter boarding school at St. Peter's College, Muenster, Saskatchewan. Five years later he entered the monastery there and became a priest. "Obedience is a very dangerous thing if you follow blindly,” he says of his decision to leave the priesthood ten years later. Next, he wore the hats of high school principal, teacher, folk festival president, cemetery counselor, sports coach, and theatre set designer.

Also on Jim’s resumé is “woodcarver”. “I love beautiful things, seeing them, touching them, creating them. Art stretches my imagination and my heart,” he says.

Jim’s farming upbringing was steeped in creativity and resourcefulness. “My family on both sides were craftspeople of one kind or another. My great grandfather was a wooden shoe maker. We were rather poor. We could not afford to buy toys. We made them ourselves, carving animals and building houses and machinery out of scraps of wood.”

Today Jim’s residence is home to his beautiful carving legacy, many pieces of which he’s given as gifts to his daughters. From raw pieces of wood – some big, cumbersome ones that he’s held onto for decades -- he has created chess sets, horses, masks, and human figures. It’s important to Jim that you not only look, but touch, his work.

‘When I was young, we lived next door to a blind man. He taught me the importance of having your fingers on your work, and to use your ears.” One might wonder about the relationship between carving and hearing, but to Jim, the sound of a wood surface interacting with a particular tool can be helpful in the art-making.

In the 1950s, Jim was exposed to great art at St. John's in Collegeville, Minnesota, where he also took art courses. He subsequently studied for several summers in Banff, and came under the artistic influence of his late wife, Ruth Whitney, whose beautiful paintings hang in Jim’s home.

What other interests does Jim have? “I consider myself fortunate enough to have stuck my mind into a great many corners of knowledge and experience. Sports, writing, teaching, lecturing, studying, reading, visiting friends and family, listening to others tell their stories, eating, bitching, telling jokes, playing cards, playing solitaire, loafing, watching TV. When all is said and done, there are very few things in life that I do not find in some way fascinating. I abhor stupidity and ill-will. I do not understand greed or jealousy. I have little or no patience with arrogance. I am excited when I engage with people who search honestly for truth and meaningfulness in human life.”

Finally, I asked Jim if he feels that artists are treated with indifference in our society. “As a historian, I am not certain there ever was a time when one can say with assurance that artists were revered. Artists don’t do their work in order to be recognized. They do art because they cannot not do it, because everything inside them compels them to express what they feel deep within themselves. That is reward enough if at the same time there is bread on the table and a place to bunk and people around whom they love and who love them in return.”

Jim Gerwing’s carvings and paintings will be displayed at the Beacon office (#7-435 Simcoe Street) for the James Bay Art Walk, Sept 5-6, 2009.