The pain at the root of his art
Josiah "Josh" Westcott finds the makings of his dragons in the woods he loves. "I get most of my stuff right outside my door," he says. "I trip over it or dig it up."
Josiah "Josh" Westcott finds the makings of his dragons in the woods he loves.
"I get most of my stuff right outside my door," he says. "I trip over it or dig it up."
Wild cherry roots, mountain laurel branches, and pine cone "petals" are among the flora this soft-spoken, self-taught artist uses to craft his fanciful, finely detailed forest creatures.
Each dragon, gargoyle, troll, and Jersey Devil undulating beneath pine-petal skins, or bursting from gnarled, serpentine roots, carries a story. As does the man who makes them.
Westcott's is about the richness of familial roots and the pain of family tragedies; about how creative work can keep a person connected to what matters most, even when he's grieving.
"This was a vine that grew in the sassafras," Westcott, 69, says, showing me a gloriously carved ornamental staff.
He knows what to look for, and where, because "I grew up in the woods," he says.
When Westcott is working on a piece, "I try to make everything as natural as possible," he explains.
"No metal, no plastic, no nails, no staples; all the joints on the dragons are pegged. The only [commercial product] I use is glue."
Westcott's studio - "I call it a shop" - is in a cozy house trailer a short walk from the Deerfield Township, Cumberland County, home he shares with his wife, Venetta.
"We've been together 47 years, and I am so proud of him," she says. "He has no idea."
In the shop, racks on the wall hold brushes, nut picks, knives, drills, surgical instruments, and less exotic implements he uses to cut and carve and construct his exuberantly expressive creations.
"There are so many textures. You can do so much with texture," the big, bearded biker and retired oil refinery worker observes.
Westcott is reluctant to show his work, mostly because he's reluctant to sell it. But he will put some of it on display at Lines on the Pines (linesonthepines.org).
The event begins at 11 a.m. Sunday at the Historic Renault Winery in Atlantic County.
"What Josh does is bring to life what the Pine Barrens used to be about - the Pineys making use of the land and using nature to create crafts and art," says Mullica Township resident Linda Stanton, who founded Lines in 2006.
Westcott got connected to the annual gathering of Pinelands-centric artists, writers, photographers, craftspeople, and others through a neighbor who gave him a book, The Legendary Pine Barrens (Plexus Publishing) by Paul Evans Pedersen Jr.
"Josh called me up, and as soon as I saw his work, my jaw dropped," says Pedersen, 61, of Franklin Township, who's also an artist as well as a musician.
"Josh is making art out of stuff you would normally walk over," he adds. "He's keeping the folk tradition of the Pines alive."
Westcott doesn't consider himself a folk artist.
"I'm somebody who releases hidden objects from [material] nature has already provided," he insists.
When he brings home, say, a serpentine root or a gnarled branch, "I don't know what it's going to be until it tells me," Westcott says, adding, "I'll be sitting in my chair and picking a piece of rotten root apart to get to the good wood. I don't know what I'm looking for. It produces itself."
Sometimes the usefulness of a thing is obvious; Westcott made dragon's "teeth" from mother-of-pearl he inherited from his grandfather, a button-maker who also was named Josiah Westcott.
The grandson also uses his grandfather's workbench and wears the frames of his glasses, too.
He credits his granddaughter, Cheyanne, with inspiring him to use pine petals to make dragons. "She noticed that they looked like scales," he recalls.
The illness and death of Cheyanne's father, Bobby (Westcott's son), from cancer at age 40 in 2013 focused the artist's attention on his work.
As did the death last November of the younger of the Westcotts' two children, Brandi, who was 35 when she died of cancer.
Brandi, who had a successful career as a floral designer, had encouraged her dad to take his work seriously. "She was so enthusiastic," Westcott recalls.
She accompanied him to his first-ever show, at Batsto Village in Wharton State Forest, several years ago. And despite her illness, she went to his second show, also at Batsto, last October.
"When I start to feel doubt or depressed about my work not being very important, I remember her telling me that it is," he says. "I see it through her eyes. I feel like she's telling me to go deeper."
856-779-3845 @inqkriordan