In March of 2004 Richard and Norma Mazza pulled their Airstream trailer into the Elks Club parking lot in Sierra Vista, AZ intending to stay a week.  They just happened to park next to a very friendly fellow who turned out to be a master carver from Michigan named Silvano Salvador.    Five weeks later Richard had learned to carve the fan birds he has shown us how to do, carved a sign for the front of his motor home and a few other things.  Woodcarving has almost completely replaced his lapidary hobby and kept him busy turning out about fifty carvings per year.   

They came North and in the fall Richard joined NWCA.  He doesn't want to be an officer but is a hard worker on the show and the other activities of the club.  When not traveling he is a regular at the meetings and always has something in Show & Tell.  An intermediate level carver, he has a large number of ribbons from our show, the Puyallup Fair,  the Quilceda Show, and others.  He has taught Fan bird carving and bark carving.

Richard's favorite carving medium is cottonwood bark, but he has also made canes and walking sticks from Yucca and carved heads for them in Spalted Maple and other woods, done some in-the-round and some relief carving.  He says he doesn't have a favorite subject but enjoys carving whimsical houses, mostly in Cottonwood bark.  He has recently been busy carving flutes.

Carving is done 99 percent by hand, with a Fordham tool used to rough out hard woods before finishing with knives and gouges.  At home carving is done in a comfortable chair in his living room, with his tools by his feet and with a handy swivel lamp.  A large apron catches the chips and is carefully dumped when he stops.  Besides carving at home he travels to carving activities over a wide area.

Most bark carvings are finished with aerosol sprays of semi-gloss Deft and Krylon 1311 Matte finish.  Color is added with acrylic paint and acrylic pencils, and fine-tuned with paper pencils.  Some are finished with light brown Briwax applied with his fingers.  In the can, light brown Briwax looks like black shoe polish and it can be built up in a shallow groove to make a nearly black line but when rubbed out it leaves almost no color.  Walking sticks and canes are finished with gunstock oil to withstand weather and hard use.

Richard was born and raised in Washington State.  His working life began in his parents cheese manufacturing company followed by working on computers at Weyerhaeuser's corporate headquarters, where he met Norma.  The last twelve years were spent in wholesale food sales before he retired in 2001.

He and Norma have been married for forty-two years and have two sons and a daughter, two grandsons, and three granddaughters, two great grandsons, and two great granddaughters.  In addition to their family, Richard enjoys fly-fishing, bird and big game hunting and golf, although he says he brings home more wood than game from his hunting trips now.  And since replacing some of his power tools with a Shopsmith due to space considerations, he has started to make use of the lathe on the Shopsmith by turning bowls.

 written by    Jack  LaFond