A New Brunswick man is honouring his father by making whimsical works of folk art aimed at making people smile.
Sitting in his garage in Moncton, N.B. on a stool forged by his late father, Stephen Brander taps into his whimsical side.
“I think he would really enjoy that I am doing this,” said the artist, who started carving playful folk art pieces in April.
He calls his works Fiddler’s Folk Art, named after the metalworks shop his father Darrell Brander ran in Nova Scotia called Fiddler’s Forge. His father died a decade ago.
“He just had that mind that if he could draw it and conceive it, he could make it,” said Brander, who is carrying on in his father’s creative wake. “I don’t think he got to finish a lot of stuff.”
Brander’s carvings are whimsical folk art pieces, each of which carries a riddle.
“That’s part of the fun: people trying to figure out what it is I am making,” he said.
A carving of a hippo carrying a pot with a moose’s head sticks outside of the pot he calls Hippo-pot-o-moose.
He, like his dad, sketches out his ideas on paper and then transforms the carved riddles into colourful works that serve as conversation pieces.
“There is always a point that I chuckle to myself and then I am like, ‘OK, now I have figured it out,'” said Brander who is turning those tears of loss into light-hearted chuckles.
Brander says his dad would likely get a kick out of his kooky carvings.
“He had a good sense of humour, a little joke here and there and would make you smile,” he said.
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