PLATTSBURGH & Artist and carver Paul Casson creates from sketches, photographs, memory and road kill.
"I have stuff in the freezer," said Casson, who lives in AuSable Forks. "I've been hunting all my life. There are a few victims."
His retrospective exhibition, "Paul Casson: An Exhibit of Paintings and Sculpture," runs through Oct. 30 at the North Country Cultural Center for the Arts in Plattsburgh.
"Peregrine Falcon with Drake Wood Duck" is among the 24 not-for-sale sculptures on exhibit. The work was his sample to give clients an idea of his style when he carved-to-order. Others include "Mature Female Marsh Hawk (Northern Harrier)," "American Kestrel with Grasshopper" and "Male Belted Kingfisher."
"I started by making hunting decoys," Casson said. "I couldn't get enough information, so I tore a few commercial ones apart and made my own from what I found out. I wrote my own book, 'Decoys Simplified,' published in 1972 by Freshet Press. Those decoys were made with refrigeration cork for the bodies and wooden heads of pine or cedar. I kept going with wood. I did the craft-show circuit when I was in Vermont and then again on the Cape (Cod). The best duck hunting I had in my life was on the Cape. The job gave me access to a lot of water other people couldn't get near."
TREE CLIMBER
Casson spent 13 years as supervisor of structures and grounds for the seven-village Town of Barnstable located mid-Cape. During that time, he was married to his first wife, Eileen (Brennan), who died from cancer in 1992.
A Sunday Boston Globe advertisement for the Barnstable position took him to the Atlantic Coast post-retirement.
"I did everything but roads that belonged to the seven villages — three marinas; 17 beaches; 100 acres of cemetery; 120 rotaries and traffic islands, 52 with flower beds; the Kennedy Memorial in Hyannis; the Joseph Kennedy Rink. I had 50 good people. We took care of all of that."
Before he "retired," Casson and his wife raised five children and operated a landscape/nursery business in Bedford, N.Y., for 25 years.
He and Eileen had married in 1950, starting the business a year later. Before that, Casson worked for a couple of nurseries, putting to use what he learned at an agricultural school in Farmingdale. Before ag school, he was a tree climber for Woodlawn Cemetery.
"They didn't have hydraulic trucks then. They needed climbers to thin out the trees."
During World War II, Casson was a U.S. Navy Seabee. His two-year tour included the invasion of Okinawa, Guam and Truk Atoll, where he celebrated his 19th birthday.
WINTER PAINTER
"When I got home, folks knew I could draw. I was a little edgy getting used to civilian life. They said I could calm down if I took up painting. I did, and that's how I got started with that."
In the exhibition, his oil paintings range from "Winter Weasel" (1959) to "After the Storm" (2009). Though he uses acrylic paint on his carvings, his preferred medium is oil.
"I just like it. That's what I started with."
During his last three years of high school, Casson was a tree climber for a northern Westchester outfit. As a kid growing up in the Bronx/Yonkers line, he ran away from the city to Van Cortlandt Park.
"One thousand acres on the northern end of the Bronx. I headed there all the time. I wasn't lost according to me, but according to my family I was."
After the war, he spent a lot of time of hunting deer in the Catskills. Through a hunting acquaintance with Keene Valley ties, Casson hunted snowshoe rabbits in the Adirondacks.
"That's how I got to look at this area in the '60s. I knew I was coming back. I had to."
He lives in his slice of the Adirondacks with his wife, Edith (Clarke) Casson, a watercolorist. He paints during the winter. The rest of the year, he gets his fill of what he sought as a boy in nature.
E-mail Robin Caudell at: rcaudell@pressrepublican.com
