A self-taught wood carver now whittles figures that are sold in galleries and collected by museums
If Don Draper were around today, acknowledging that he’s a fictional character, would his talent for crafting a pitch have transformed him into a wood carver whose whimsical work is collected by museums and sold in galleries?
I throw out the suggestion because that’s what John Cross is doing these days. He started out in advertising during the “Mad Men” era, though he never thought much of the show.
“It didn’t work for me,” he said when we met over the weekend at his studio in Elizaville, N.Y., a couple of hours north of the city. “I was very proud of what we did.”
His clients included Crest and Toyota. “I think we came up with some exciting stuff. I didn’t see that in ‘Mad Men.’ They drank a lot.”
One of his campaigns from the late ’60s featured subway posters for Scope mouthwash. They included tag lines such as “Fight Air Pollution” and “Stop Badmouthing New York City.”
It’s something of that sensibility that Mr. Cross brings to bear as a wood carver. His success probably has almost as much to do with the accessibility and easygoing humor of his subject matter as with his way with a chisel.
“What we did in the ad business was try to have a smile on it,” he recalled.
ENLARGEHis work includes Negro League baseball players; Miss America contestants; Groucho Marx, Jimmy Durante and Woody Allen on matching plinths; women doing perfect swan dives; and perhaps my personal favorite, a gentleman in a tux, his jacket removed, sitting in a club chair and enjoying a cigar.
Mr. Cross says it isn’t a self-portrait.
The artist, 80 years old, was born in New Jersey. But his father, a utility executive, moved the family to Montreal when he was a boy.
“When John moved to Montreal he had a yearning for things American,” said his wife, Linda, herself an artist. “He collected sports magazines,” which provided the inspiration for his earliest figures.
‘I think we came up with some exciting stuff. I didn’t see that in “Mad Men.” They drank a lot.’
Mr. Cross attended Middlebury College and received an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago. But his natural inclination was toward art rather than business—and whittling in particular.
Self-taught, he’d whittle on the set when he was shooting ads in Los Angeles, where he spent several months a year. He whittled while walking to work down Madison Avenue.
“It’s like texting and walking,” he joked.
His initial recognition came in the early 1970s by creating large geometric pieces made from weathered timber that were shown in public spaces, such as Brooklyn Borough Hall Plaza.
The construction beams, 4 inches by 4 inches, were “salvaged” from New York University, where the Elmer Holmes Bobst Library was rising at the time. “I’d schlep these 10-foot beams up Broadway,” to his studio on 12th Street. “I’d go by policemen. Nobody said anything.”
ENLARGEMr. Cross quit advertising in the early 1990s—“I didn’t need the money,” he stated simply—to whittle full time.
He carves using soft sugar pine from the Carolinas, his studio overlooking the rolling hills of the Hudson Valley, filled with neatly arranged Swedish carving knives and files in various shapes and sizes.
If there’s a definition of happiness, perhaps it’s having the good fortune to find something that lets you lose track of time. “Someone came to see us one day,” recalled the artist, who was whittling on his back porch at the time. “Apparently, they stood there for 15 minutes. I had no awareness of anything, which is heavenly. The wood has a nice smell to it. It comes off easily.”
It also doesn’t hurt if you can make some money off your passion. At a show at the David Findlay Jr. Gallery, Mr. Cross’s works sold in the $6,000 to $8,000 range.
The artist is currently working on an ambitious tug of war involving multiple figures. It follows an exquisite collection of circus animals that Mr. Cross started carving in 2002 for his grandson, Will. He stopped adding to the menagerie, not because Will, now a teenager, outgrew the figures, but because he eventually ran out of space on his mantelpiece.