Terry Kramer
* Click on image to enlarge. Then hover over enlargement to navigate.
|
Terry Kramer is first and foremost an educator who enjoys teaching. He has taught in public and private education for the past 33 years. His students have been elementary school children, including special classes of handicapped students, college graduates, and education and business professionals.
For over twenty years, through woodcarving clubs in the Pacific Northwest, Terry has taught western woodcarvers how to improve their carving skills and how to carve realistic faces. The last six years he has taught face carving seminars throughout the United States and Canada.
Terry’s talent allows him to carve just about anything well. He is best known for carving realistic faces. During his artistic career, he has created over a thousand faces in stone, clay and wood.
He has been active as a carver, judge, and teacher in major wood carving shows in the Pacific Northwest. During this time Terry has won his share of ribbons, including the coveted Best of Show Award at the Northwest Carvers Show, the largest carving show in the Pacific Northwest. In addition, he has participated in hundreds of juried fine art shows, western art shows, as well as private shows throughout the United States.
Terry’s carvings can be found in galleries throughout the United States, from Maine to Florida, California to British Columbia, and many places in between. His carvings can be found in homes and offices throughout the United States and in Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, England, France and Scandinavia.
Terry has carved hundreds of master carvings for use in commercial reproduction. Castings include a line of over two hundred athletic figures and a line of Indian heads that was sold throughout the United States in gift shops, including national park shops. The American Indian Series is his current line of Indian faces.
Most of Terry’s art training has been informal. He likes to think of himself as self-guided, not self. taught. As he would laughingly say, “Why would anyone want to be self-taught, when you realize that your teacher doesn’t know any more than you? Who in their right mind would want a teacher like that?” To be self-guided is different. His basic way of learning has been to find someone who can do what he wants to do, learn how they do it, improve their process if possible, and adapt it to his own personal style.
Terry’s formal art training included two years of work at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon, where he spent six hours per week sculpting studies from models. He feels that this activity has had the greatest effect on his skills as an artist.
Terry teaches five day seminars on face carving at his home studio in Salem, Oregon, as well as other locations throughout the United States and Canada. A favorite teaching experience is the annual summer “Study of Faces” seminar at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology located on the Oregon Coast.
Terry and his wife, Kay, sell his original art and the American Indian Series of cast reproductions of his carvings. They are available to schedule show and talks, demonstrations and carving seminars.