Skip to main content
Customizable
Mountain Man with Raven | Wall Sculpture in Wall Hangings by Jeffrey H Dean. Item composed of wood
Trade Member Offer Available
Customize this piece
Mountain Man with Raven | Wall Sculpture in Wall Hangings by Jeffrey H Dean. Item composed of wood
Mountain Man with Raven | Wall Sculpture in Wall Hangings by Jeffrey H Dean. Item composed of wood
Mountain Man with Raven | Wall Sculpture in Wall Hangings by Jeffrey H Dean. Item composed of wood
Mountain Man with Raven | Wall Sculpture in Wall Hangings by Jeffrey H Dean. Item composed of wood

Created and Sold by Jeffrey H Dean

Jeffrey H Dean

Mountain Man with Raven - Wall Hangings

Price from $20,000 to $24,000

Creation: 6-8 weeks

Mountain Man with Raven

Fireplace mantle and pierced cherry relief of mountain man and raven. In 1991 I was asked to make a wall piece for the chimney wall in this Linville, NC home.

When seeing the beautiful stonework, my first impression was that I sure didn't want to cover it up. I gazed at it for a while and began to see an appropriate picture in the stonework. I made a full-sized rubbing of the wall to map the grout lines in the masonry.

Back in the studio, I overlaid it with a grid and reduced it to an 8.5″ x 14″ piece of paper on which I could do my design. After approval, I scoured the woods and fields along the mountain roads near our home in the Banner Elk, NC area and found a standing dead cherry tree. I cut it up, preserving the forked branches.

I cut it into forked boards with a homemade chainsaw lumbering jig and had them planed and kiln-dried. I drew the design on the original rubbing, marked the joints, and cut out patterns> I then glued them to the forked boards and cut them out with a jigsaw.

The joints were mitered and spline grooves cut. Parts were then clamped end to end, drilled, and pegged to lock the splines in place. All the edges were then sanded to a refined shape and oiled before fastening to the masonry.

From the owner:
'I met Jeff at Art in the Park in Blowing Rock. He had an impressive portfolio, and as I'd recently built a new home in Linville, I asked him to design a wall sculpture for the tall stone fireplace. He came by the house, and after discussing themes and commenting on the beautiful masonry job, he came up with a design that complimented the stonework rather than hiding it. It is a beautiful piece and was a special part of the house. I enjoyed it for many years, and now, 20 plus years later, the family that currently owns the house comments on it often.'

Returns accepted within 7 days. See Creator Policy
Trade Members enjoy Free returns within 30 days regardless of the Creator's return policy. Learn more

Item Mountain Man with Raven
Created by Jeffrey H Dean
As seen in Private Residence, Linville, NC
Have more questions about this item?
Jeffrey H Dean
Meet the Creator
Wescover creator since 2021
Making focal point art for fine homes, businesses, and public places since 1981

Ever since that first slap and cry at St. Josephs back in 56’ it’s been rather non-stop. I think the first sculpture I made was in a Fairbanks area nursery school. I remember climbing the basement stairs with my small clay baseball player, disappointed the glaze wasn’t as expected.

Seven years later, on sabbatical in Oak Ridge, Mom was introduced to potting and I met my future wife Ranja. It’s a long story but she was 6 and I was 12. I’m embarrassed to say I mostly remember playing with her older siblings, swimming, making hay houses, and riding their horses and burros. I do remember her as a feisty little sun-baked blonde.

During my teenage years, I got interested in pottery and woodcarving. The winter of 1975 found me spending 30 or 40 hours a week in Ron Senungetuk’s class at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, learning design, metalsmithing, and woodcarving. The next spring, Fairbanks potters invited Marguerite Wildenhain, a former Bauhaus student, to teach a workshop. She commented on my trying to squeeze the whole Brooks Range onto the neck of a 6” vase. She also said if I wanted to attend her summer school, I needed to first go to South Bear School with her student Dean Schwarz and she’d take me on his recommendation. It meant missing the chance to help Ron on his walnut mobile for the Noel Wien Library, but the rest of my education was to unfold from that South Bear summer.

I was lucky to have four summers at Marguerite’s Pond Farm Pottery, learning about drawing, potting, sculpture, and making variations on a theme. Mom went to South Bear in 1977 and met students from Naguib School of Sculpture. Mustafa Naguib, fled the revolution in Egypt to open a small sculpture school in the Chicago area. Over the next three years, I spent 24 intensive months making life-size clay figures and learning about portrait sculpture, anatomy, mold making, and casting. In the summer of 1978, I missed Pond Farm to accompanied my grandmother on a wondrous 6 week trip to Italy and Sicily.

Back in Alaska, I built a couple of yurts on a Fairbanks hilltop. I went to Monday night drawing, carved, modeled, and tinkered. In 1985, Ranja came for a visit, and… I suppose I should start over and keep it to the highlights:

…small berry faces from photo and fridge,
tentative steps up on Cranberry Ridge,
Sacks in a closet of hard Logan bread,
travel by Cat bucket, backpack, and sled.

Summer, sabbatical, hay, horse, and sun,
harbinging true love, swim, ride and run.
Dad’s watching grizzly, Mom’s throwing clay,
I’m skinny and dipping with brothers in May.

Boreal rambles with hockey stick sword,
summers of building with log and with board.
Bent knives and boxes, fireweed fall,
ski race and ice skate, the north country’s call.

Pottery, redwood, sauna and sail,
Blacksmith and hammer, adze, poker and nail.
Clay figure, foundry, Brancusi and bone,
Master and model, bent steel, stone.

Sketch book in Florence, museum and pen,
Grandmother, Moses, Mt. Aetna and hen.
To yurts on a hilltop by ski, shoe and tire,
cooking and carving with soapstone and fire.

Ranja a beacon from childhood past,
True Love for life and companion to last.
On frostbitten bus ride from winter to warm,
in riverside workshop, farmhouse, and barn.

By chisel to wallet to table and spoon.
Careering as sculptor, boom-bust, again boom,
Our children are growing, farewell horse and friend,
back out on the highway to northern road’s end.

Shop, house, and heating in timber and steel,
pump, pipe, and code, reinventing no wheel.
In Homer and hammer-beam, pocket and goal,
from unraveled tangle of nettle and soul,

the phoenix has risen, the ashes now cold,
artwork is making, for sale or sold.
New memories form and old memories fade,
all mingling back into whence they were made.