Julius "Rusty" Johnson
     I graduated from the University of Tulsa in 1965 with a bachelor of arts degree and a major in Commercial Art.
     I began woodcarving in 1959 as a Boy Scout working at Camp Garland near Locust Grove. I discovered I could make more money selling my carved neckerchief slides than I was making as a counselor ($8 dollars a week). I continued to carve infrequently until 1998 and I decided I needed more knowledge of tools and techniques to improve. I joined the Eastern Oklahoma Woodcarvers Association and learned about gouges, chisels, veiners, rough-out knives, detail knives, relief carving, in-the-round carving, chip carving, and different carving woods like basswood, tupelo, jelutong and butternut.
     I have won awards at local and area woodcarving shows, including 2003 Best of Show in Rogers, Ark., and the sweepstakes award at the Tulsa State Fair for the past 10 years. I have gone on to earn national awards at the International Woodcarvers Congress (2008, 2009) and the Caricature Carvers of America (2000- present).
     In the fall of 2009, I continued my education, spending two weeks at the Geisler-Moroder Woodcarving School in Elbigenalp, Austria, studing the Tyrolean style of carving.
     My style is an blend of subjects influenced by an eclectic school of artists: woodcarver Willard Stone, caricature artists Gerry Gersten and Jack Davis, illustrators Howard Pyle and N.C. Wyeth, western artists Fredrick Remington and Charles Russell, and sculptors Michaelangelo, and Bernini and the classical school of Praxiteles.
     Several years ago one of my co-workers said that my carvings looked like my cartoons. I still enjoy that compliment, but have enlarged my repertoire to include a larger variety of styles and subjects. I hope you enjoy my works as much as I enjoy carving them.
     Rusty Johnson