Woodcarver Ness to appear at Opera Hall

The Society for Preservation of Minneota Heritage (SPMH) continues to utilize the historic Opera Hall space and will host a storyteller/woodcarver at 2 p.m. on Thursday, May 5.
Jerry Ness, a longtime successful coach at Atwater and later Atwater-Cosmos-Grove City, is now a retired self-taught woodcarver who also enjoys writing and telling stories.
Ness began his carving skills in the 1990s by carving duck decoys.
"That brief fling was largely set aside due to the time involved in teaching, coaching and raising a family," he said in a press release. :Thirty years quickly passed and I found myself living in retirement on a hobby farm in (Nome) North Dakota and being semi-isolated by the rigors of a pandemic-infested world."
Ness was a taxidermist for many years and honed his carving skills for bodies to be used in mounted birds and fish. After a few years, he "ventured into an area I knew even better than ducks."
"That was the world of Norwegians," he said. "Norwegian caricatures that represented people of my youth."
Ness doesn't carve his caricatures out of basswood for profit.
"Just for fun," he remarked. "I have a bunch of carved pieces. I guess my grandchildren will get them some day."
Ness carved Norwegian caricatures are what he refers to as his "Ingavars, Stellas, Oles and Rungwalds." He felt each caricature has a story to tell.
"It fell to me to give these basswood people a voice," he said.
Ness was able to easily render a story to each carving. He is a freelance writer who writes for an outdoor magazine in North Dakota, as well as having written for other publications.
"And so, from the short statured, bombastic mayor to the tragic Sara, who lost her only child on the voyage to America, my wooden people speak," the personable Ness said. "They have stories to tell, just like all of us. I recognize that I cannot carve like Fred Cogelow and I cannot write like Minneota's own Bill Holm, but I can do a bit of both."
The event at the Opera Hall is free and open to the public.