Tennessee Living

In downtown Chattanooga’s Coolidge Park, an old-fashioned carousel in a glass pavilion beckons passersby to forget their cares with a nostalgic ride atop a colorful horse, elephant, giraffe or even an ostrich.

With its 54 hand-painted wooden carousel animals, the Coolidge Park Carousel is a rare sight in an age when most carousels sport foreign-made fiberglass replicas of antique wooden horses.

It’s also a dream come true for 70-year-old Bud Ellis.

Ellis is a former University of Tennessee art instructor who now runs Horsin’ Around Wood Carving School in a workshop behind his Soddy-Daisy home. Ellis and his students carved and painted each of the carousel’s animals over a period of 12 years and convinced the city to fund the carousel’s construction in 1999.

“The golden age for carousel building was in the 1920s, and then the Depression pretty much wiped it out. Most of the carousels you see in malls today have fiberglass animals made in Italy, and the horses look kind of sterile,” Ellis says, striking a funny mock-horse pose. “The real wooden carousel horses are kind of romantic, because people remember riding on the hand-carved animals as children.”

Ellis began carving carousel animals 17 years ago. As his expertise grew, others started asking him to share his knowledge; he started his first carousel animal carving school in a Chattanooga warehouse at the base of Lookout Mountain. Since then, Ellis has taken more than 500 students under his wing, and together they’ve turned out roughly 450 carved animals. Students find out about Horsin’ Around Wood Carving School via the Internet or Ellis’ step-by-step instructional book, Carousel Animal Carving, which is available at bookstores nationwide.

“I’ve had students from just about every state – including Alaska – as well as England and Canada. There have been millionaires, retired CIA agents and several FBI people – just about any occupation you can think of,” Ellis says.

Some students come once a week; others work straight through and come for weeks at a time.

“They call me and tell me when they’re coming, and sometimes they stay at a local motel for a couple weeks and work,” Ellis says. “A lot will come and get the head and legs done, and then come back later to finish the body. Usually in two or three visits, they get it done.”

Ellis “roughs out” the horse’s head and other body parts from a block of basswood, and students use mallets, chisels and drawing knives to carve the details before they assemble and paint the horse. Most have little or no prior artistic ability or carving experience.

“It’s just pure dog determination. You don’t give up,” Ellis says. “I set this up so anyone can come in, and if they follow directions stepby- step, they can pretty much do it. But you can’t just whack these out in a day.”

Small animals take about 300 hours to complete, and larger ones require around 400 hours of work. The cost is $1,250 for a small animal, $1,450 for a medium and $1,650 for a large, and the tuition includes one year of instruction and all required materials.

Most students display their finished works of art in their homes, while others give them as gifts to grandchildren.

“Antique carousel horses are sought after – they bring thousands of dollars,” Ellis says. “The average guy can’t afford one, so they make their own. To see your dream come true is so rare … to see it actually take shape.”

The atmosphere at Horsin’ Around Wood Carving School is friendly and cheerful, with bluegrass music playing in the background as students sit and chisel, sand or paint. People can stop in to see the studio and watch Ellis and his students at work, and Ellis often gives tours to bus groups.

“It interests people, because it’s very unusual to see a carousel being built anymore,” he says.

Right now the workshop is full of endangered animals at various stages of production – an Amazon tree frog, a red panda, bald eagle, dolphin and baby rhino, to name a few. Ellis and his students are working on an endangered species carousel for the Chattanooga Zoo. They hope to have it in place by 2008.

In the meantime, Ellis takes an active role in the upkeep of the city’s carousel in Coolidge Park. At least once a week, he can be spotted touching up paint jobs and mending scratches on the animals he and his students made with their own hands.

“What I like most about carousels is that you can be watching one, and you see somebody putting their 2-year-old child on for their first ride, and the child’s eyes are all lit up,” Ellis says. “Then you can look across and see people helping a 90- year-old lady on, and she’s got tears in her eyes, because it’s probably her last ride. I love that.”

Carve a Horse or a Monkey

Learn more about Bud Ellis and his Horsin’ Around Wood Carving School by calling 423-332-1111 or visiting his Web site at www.horsin-around.net.

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Magazine:
Tennessee Home & Farm, Spring 2010 Edition Edition

Headline:
Horsin’ Around in Soddy-Daisy

Summary:
Bud Ellis carves carousel animals – and can teach you, too.

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