Up from the Deeps

Ken Dehnert spent 30 years felling trees and 25 years diving in the waters off the Olympic Peninsula. His life experience informs his art, which has recently taken a new and more intense direction.

Tourists and locals are introduced to his earlier work when they drive by his his yard installation on Highway 112, the coastal road by the Peninsula's Strait of Juan de Fuco on the way to Neah Bay: a pod of carved wooden killer whales that seem to be swimming and breeching as though the lawn were a calm green sea. The installation is so startling the un-warned driver is momentarily discombobulated; if the definition of art is the ability to shock and open the mind, the whales succeed by producing total disorientation.

Dehnert was happy doing his art for himself and a private clientel, until a tragedy in his life put him on a new road. For 35 years, Dehnert's wife Welleen was his companion, friend and inspiration, as well as a sculptor and stained-glass artist in her own right. Like Dehnert, she worked in the logging industry, spending 20 years in the Aberdeen pulp mill. She succumbed to cancer in 2006.

Dehnert was shattered. His diving and his art sustained him through this hard time. He turned to his art for comfort and healing. He created some wonderful underwater paintings, but his real forte is his wood-carving. Now he's ready to share that art with the world.

The artist respects the original materials. When he uses a piece of wood, it shows its history. His latest art piece, "Big Skate," is a life-size representation of the big flat sharks that swim in the waters off the coast. The predatory fish is sculptured in maple, and is suspended, as though swimming, over a maple boll whose natural growth reflects a resemblance to coral and barnacles. The skate's shining back shows growth scars from the original tree, resembling the scars a big fish may pick up in a long life.

"I love the natural world; it's provided me with everything," said Dehnert. "This is my way of giving back, to show people what's in a tree. I want people to see more than just the trunk and branches."

Dehnert may need a longer period of recovery before he can see a living tree as a beautiful thing. His life cutting and fighting big firs -- called "killing trees" on the peninsula -- left him with a bad hip that needed to be replaced.

"That's what I got out of the timber industry," said Dehnert.

His injuries haven't interfered with his passion for diving. Swimming underwater relaxes him and takes the weight off his hip. It gives him more ideas; diving off Hawaii inspired him to create a piece featuring tropical corals and a sea turtle.

Dehnert's art takes time. It's easy, he says, to sand cedar, but maple is hard, and requires many patient hours of hand-polishing to bring out the final sheen.

To share his inspiration even more directly, Dehnert partnered with Bill Tinsley to produce a video, "A Brief Look At The Cold Waters Of The Pacific Northwest." Tinsley provided the computer-generated music. The video has been shown at the Washington State University Beachwalker's Association. The video is available locally for sale, but Dehnert wants to produce it for wider distribution.

"Picture the most beautiful place on land, and it doesn't come close to what I've seen underwater," said Dehnert. "I taught myself marine biology. There's so much to learn."

He offered a shell full of small pieces of ivory; the ear-bones of rockfish. Dehnert said he has heard halibut also have such bones. Some of the snow-white bones were drilled for earrings.

Dehnert's larger sculptures are the results of the long hours of care and labor required to bring them to a final finish, and are priced accordingly. But the art-lover who would like to treasure a small part of his work need only remember that when an artist takes a break, it's usually with more art.

In leisure moments, Dehnert creates his smaller, more affordable pieces: paper-weight stones and elegant devil's-thorn walking-sticks, which he has patiently decorated with tiny dots of fabric paint, so even and bright they resemble beadwork. They' reveal the same care and attention to detail Dehnert shows on his full-sized sculptures, but more playful and daring in use of color. They're something small and beautiful the traveler can take home while considering possible purchase of Dehnert's more seriously-priced sculptures.

Dehnert will be bringing back more images to land to share the remote beauty that helped him heal in heart and body.

The artist's work and videos are displayed at the Three Sisters of Clallam Art Gallery in Clallam Bay. Phone 360 963 2854 for details.