photo: Cedric N. Chatterley

Virgil Ledford

Art Form: Folk/Traditional Crafts and Visual Arts

Old Soco Road Box 216
Cherokee, NC 28719-9796

Phone: 828/497-7318

 

About Virgil Ledford

Born and reared in the Birdtown community near Cherokee, Virgil Ledford had a passion for drawing when he was a young boy. He recalls teaching himself to carve by trying to translate his drawings into wood. "I should have been doing my schoolwork," he remembers. "Teacher was always getting after me, sitting around drawing pictures. I picked up me a piece of wood one day at home--I think a little piece of pine board--and I drew me a horse on it. And I took a mountain knife and outlined it and then shaped it up--a relief picture is what I did on that. I guess that's what got me started carving."

Virgil still makes small carvings of animals, a skill he refined in high school under the instruction of Amanda Crowe, a distinguished Cherokee carver. "She'd say, 'You got to have an idea, or a picture in your head what that bird looks like, or whatever you're carving.' Then she'd instruct you, 'Well, you need to take a little bit off here.' When you got through that stage, she'd show you how to take your knife and smooth it up."

The woods he uses--cherry, basswood, buckeye, walnut, and cedar--come from a nearby sawmill, from neighbors, and from the land around his house. His work is distinguished by a careful use of the natural patterns and colors in the wood and by his own interpretations of owls, bears, foxes, turtles, horses, and numerous other animals. "You can't carve like somebody else," he says. "You got to have your own feeling of what the animal or bird looks like."

His first step in a carving is to draw a pattern on a stiff piece of paper. The initial inspiration for that comes from books, magazines, and from nature itself. "If I see a picture that I like I'll sit down and draw it," he explains, "but I'll change a lot of the movements and get my own idea of what I want it to look like." Next, he traces the pattern onto a piece of wood. Using a bandsaw, he cuts around the outline and then chisels out a rough shape. After shaping the piece with a pocket knife, he smooths it with sandpaper and carves in details like claws, eyes, and ears. Finally, he rubs in olive oil or applies several coats of finish.

Virgil Ledford's larger pieces include legendary and historical Cherokee figures. Many of his carvings are in private collections throughout the United States. Some are a permanent part of the Burgess Indian Museum, the Department of Interior Collection of Indian Art, and the gallery of Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual. His sculpture of Sequoyah was purchased by the Tennessee Valley Authority for the official opening of the Sequoyah Birthplace Museum in Vonore, Tennessee, and his sculpture of a Cherokee hunter with an eagle has become the official logo of the Museum of the Cherokee Indian in Cherokee. "If you find something that you're good at and you like to do it and if you like to make money at it, stick with it," he says, quoting the advice his father gave him. "Always do a good job, and then that way you won't have to go back and redo it."