Talent on display at Connell House
Sculptor Christiane Stolhofer found her purpose in life when she began carving wood over 40 years ago.
“My work is rooted in nature – it touches our spirit, our soul,” she said at the July opening of a show featuring her hand-carved wooden sculptures at Woodstock’s Connell House.
Visitors to the historic downtown venue walked through an exhibition of Katy Karnes’ large, colourful paintings to reach a more intimate space filled with a collection of Stolhofer’s life’s work. Each sculpture is unique, an abstract expression of the story that piece of wood has to tell.
“I work with the shape the wood is trying to share,” she explained. “Each tree is shaped by the environment, the animals, the soil. When you work with a root piece of that tree, you can really connect with that story, the adversity that tree has to go through in order to grow.”
Stolhofer began carving in Zimbabwe in 1983 when Zimbabwean sculptor Joseph Ndandarika handed her a piece of stone and said, “Work on it!” Smitten by the tactile art form, she quit nursing to focus on carving stone sculptures, later transitioning to local indigenous wood, and spent most of her sculpting career in Africa.
In many ways, Stolhofer too has been shaped by her environment and interactions with the people, land and creatures around her.
“My work is about connecting with nature on a spiritual level, being in it, by observing, not controlling. Africa taught me this in a big way. I’ve become much closer to nature. For a year, I worked with a wood carver in Nigeria who made pieces for religious festivals. He was an important part of the community. I realized we (in our culture) live so much in isolation.”
Community connections have been an important part of Stolhofer’s creative process, from locals helping dig up tree roots to teaching and learning from other wood carvers in Botswana and Angola.
Many of the sculptures she carved in Africa are made from Mopane wood, a dense hardwood that darkens with age.
“For rough work I use a petlwana, an adze with a wooden handle made from a spring of a Landrover that has been sharpened because the wood is very hard. I also use chisels and handsaws. I only use one electric drill for rough sanding.”
After moving to Saskatoon in 2022, Stolhofer struggled to find tree roots to carve and instead adapted her approach to working with pieces of native Canadian wood, such as Western Red and Yellow Cedar and Black Locust.
“With root wood, it’s visceral – I work with my gut and my heart,” she noted. “With softwood, I found it’s more controlled, more removed. I lifted my ideas from my gut to my head.”
A move to Deerville, New Brunswick, this year with her life partner, Carleton County native Monica Morrison, led to an exciting find: a White Cedar tree root that Stolhofer has already begun working on.
