When he was about nine years old, Phil Godlewski’s father gave him a pocketknife, and he immediately began using it to whittle and shape wood.
Now he’s 57, and Godlewski has over the years progressed to creating large, elaborate pieces of art.
“I make sculptures,” he said. “I don’t really carve wood, I sculpt it. There’s a difference between a sculpture and a carving; a sculpture is three-dimensional and a carving is only two.”
A Texas County resident for most of his life, Godlewski currently shares a home in Eunice with Lizzie Arakelian (who goes by just Lizzie), an accomplished “primitives” expert and writer for “A Simple Life,” one of the field’s leading magazines. Lizzie is amazed by how Godlewski doesn’t draw out or make sketches of his projects before he begins working on them.
“He’s somehow able to work without a drawing,” she said. “There’s no way I could do that, especially having it turn out in perfect proportion.”
“I have a picture in my head,” Godlewski said, “and I just go to work.”
When he’s creating a large sculpture, Godlewski starts the process with a chainsaw.
“Then I graduate to smaller and smaller tools as I go,” he said.
Most of the pieces Godlewski creates are made with oak.
“Because that’s what’s available around here,” he said.
Using oak means having to deal with “checking,” or cracking, as the wood dries out, Godlewski said.
“I have to kind of preserve them from the start,” he said.
Godlewski has spent some years living outside Missouri, especially during his stint with the U.S. Navy. Aspen from Colorado is one of his favorite woods to work with.
“Because it doesn’t check at all,” he said.
Some of Godlewski’s work has been, or still is, on display at area businesses. He created the eagle that’s at Arnold’s 21 Burgers and Barbecue in Mountain View and the iconic goat that used to be at The Goat Tavern at Highway 17 and TT in Eunice (which now sits in front of Godlewski’s house).
A large unfinished sculpture depicting a man and an eagle on one side and a woman’s head and the back of the eagle on the other can be seen from Highway 17 in front of Godlewski’s house.
“People are always taking pictures of it,” Lizzie said. “It seems like every bicycle rider that comes along stops to photograph it.”
Phil Godlewski stands next to the back side of an unfinished oak sculpture at his residence in eastern Texas County.
Godlewski has produced hundreds of sculptures in his career. He sells his work for what he called an “easy” price, he’s “always willing to negotiate.”
Much of Godlewski’s business comes by way of word of mouth, and many of the projects he works on are the result of custom orders. He said he prefers the custom jobs.
“Because I don’t need any inspiration,” Godlewski quipped. “They tell me what they want and I do it.”
Lizzie said Godlewski actually does find inspiration for many pieces from a particular source.
“The shape of the log,” she said. “That happens a lot; the wood will have parts sticking out and he sees something in it.”
A wooden carving hangs on a wall at Phil Godlewski’s eastern Texas County residence.
Godlewski has in the past even carved images on living trees. A friend in Colorado once hired him to carve faces in numerous trees in a forested area on his property.
“If I do one in a yard or something, I’ll scan it with a metal detector first,” Godlewski said. “As long as you don’t ring the tree, it’ll grow and change and it just looks beautiful.”
Not every apparently dead stump Godlewski has worked with was actually dead.
“I’ve seen it more than once where they’ve come back and it looks like there’s hair growing out of the sculpture’s head,” he said.
Godlewski’s favorite finished piece was a six-foot tall walking stick he fashioned for a man. He only used a pocketknife.
“On top it had a mountain man,” Godlewski said, “Below that was a crescent moon and below that was the grip. It had some swirls and some other mountain scenes. It took me a month to do it, working six hours a day – with a pocketknife. It was cool.”
Another favorite was a sculpture of a largemouth bass. Godlewski used a knot in the wood as the fish’s open mouth.
“I made it look like the fish was turned, and it was coming at you,” he said.
The community center in Summersville is conducting a fundraiser, and Godlewski will be donating a wood sculpture.
“I figured it was a good cause,” he said. “Hopefully someone will like it.” This wooden sculpture of a goat made by local resident Phil Godlewski spent years sitting in front of The Goat, a bar and grill at Highway 17 and Highway TT in eastern Texas County.
“There’s a difference between a sculpture and a carving; a sculpture is three-dimensional and a carving is only two.”
PHIL GODLEWSKI
To inquire about having Texas County resident Phil Godlewski make a custom wooden sculpture, call 417-260-7422.