I am one of those few lucky people in this world who are blessed to spend their working lives doing exactly what they want to do.

   I learned to whittle from my great uncle Alfred Adams. A Superior Court judge in Nashville, he spent many hours whittling cedar sticks, trying to create the perfect curl of wood with each stroke. The price of a consult with that wise man when I was six or eight years old was to possess a pocketknife that would shave his arm.

   My affinity for “sculpture” was discovered later, emerging as a logical escape from the standard pressures of a New England prep school’s academic demands. Cabot Lyford was the first sculptor I ever met. His style of teaching involved a lot of doing; we were welding and casting bronze and carving wood and stone in just two semesters of school.

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