North House Folk School

I've been making things for as long as I can remember. My earliest sculptures, The Vacuum Cleaner Series, were made in second grade and constructed from wood. Behind the theatre where my Grampa directed plays, I'd cull the scrap pile in search of 2x4s and plywood I could glue and screw together. Wood was plentiful, forgiving (up to a certain point), and could be worked unsupervised with the tools I had at hand. More than three decades later, wood remains a vital material in my art practice.

My name is Cal Stalvig. I'm a sculptor born on the South Shore of Gichi-gaami (Lake Superior). For much of my life, wood has been a material through which I've expressed ideas, thanks to its accessibility and relatively low barrier to entry. Over the years, I've developed a certain literacy without studying its lineage and language too deeply. I've come to North House to make a technical and linguistic leap in my art practice and career.

ADP Studio in Grand Marais

I want to learn better woodcarving and joinery techniques, about trees and forests, how to harvest and prepare logs, maintain tools, and operate a chainsaw with confidence. I want to create relationships with people who have tirelessly carried the knowledge, traditions, and stories of woodworking, so I can in turn continue the parts of the transmission. More than anything, I'm excited by what will emerge from a deeper relationship with wood itself and the stewards of its past, present, and future.

Learning to carve with a knife

Alongside sculpture, I operate a small candlemaking business. Fire, beeswax, and the intimate rituals of tending a flame have occupied my imagination for years. During my time here, I hope to push the material and form of beeswax candles in new artistic and technical directions, while building a sustainable business rooted in the restoration of fire craft.

Candles for sale in the North House School Store

My sculptures are informed by two distinct histories that meet in my own inheritance: Black fugitivity and the persecution of those condemned as witches and heretics in European courts. Working in the folk traditions of ghost stories and haunting, I create objects that invite the past into the present. I am interested in what survives persecution and migration, what knowledge remains alive in our hands, and what we reconstruct from the fragments left behind. The witch, the wise person, the griot, green man, and craftsperson are figures I invoke to help me in my work. Through sculpture, I seek to make visible the presence of those who came before us. Like ghosts, they continue to possess our bodies through the muscle memory and eyes we depend on to create our respective crafts.

Sculpture made from former ADP leftover materials

I'm honored to be part of ADP Cohort X alongside Olivia and Ian. Beyond the studio, I'm looking forward to learning to sail aboard the Hjørdis, traveling through Sweden to meet North House colleagues in January, making a sauna and design pilgrimage to Finland, and visiting the Steilneset Memorial in Vardø, Norway. Back at our ADP home, I’ll be spending plenty of time knitting in our bay window, baking sweet rolls, and getting to know this community. If you'd like to visit my studio in Grand Marais, share a story, or simply say hello, please reach out. I'd love that!

Sketches in wood: form material exploration