Click on the links below to see examples of the artist's work:
Featured Artist: Abiel Taylor
Raleigh, Newfoundland is a community of fisherman, but there is one man who has broken out of that traditional mold and made a name for himself on the provincial and national art scene. Abiel Taylor first started carving around thirty-four years ago and today makes his living solely through his artwork.
He works mostly in soapstone, whalebone, moose bone, and talc. The soapstone and whalebone come from the coast of Labrador and from neighboring beaches. As a fisherman, he travelled to the Labrador coastline every summer where he would trap and gill net for codfish. On his way back to the island he would steam into Red Bay and pick up the bone which littered the shore.
Red Bay was once the site of a whaling station back in the 1500's, and the bone from the whales is quite abundant there. A common misconception many have about the whalebone is that it is only a few years old, when in fact it takes from seventy to one-hundred years of aging for the oil to come out of the bone. Before this amount of time, the whale oil makes the bone literally impossible to carve.
Abiel carves with with a burr which is similar to a dentist's drill. It is hand operated but foot controlled. Most of his carvings are images of things he saw when growing up in Raleigh. The birds, seals, bears, and other wildlife, as well as scenes depicting aboriginal life from the past, are a true reflection of life in the North.
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