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‘The old-world way’ : Victor carver carries on family tradition of Totem Pole carving

Thick with muscle and yellow with callouses, George Gulli’s hands guide a chisel through Western larch, slowly turning a 20-foot log into a totem pole.

His hands are a tie to his heritage, to his Italian immigrant grandfather who made a life for his family as a stone mason and to his father, who founded a business based on the skill expressed through his fingertips. Those skills became his son’s.

By KRISTEN INBODY Staff Reporter

http://www.ravallinews.com/articles/2004/07/21/bitterroot/01-business.txt

"It’s cool," Gulli said. "It’s kind of the old-world way."

Next to a portrait of his own hands, Gulli, 49, keeps a framed picture of his father’s. He remembers watching as a child the magic those hands could render.

"I would be intrigued by how he would carve and this face would appear," Gulli said.

Hoping to someday pass the trade onto his own son, Joshua, 16, Gulli finds his would-be protégé keeps his fingers busy with music instead.

"He wants to play guitar and have a band," Gulli said. "He’s working at Pizza Hut and that’s more fun to him. To him, this is Dad and drudgery."

But Gulli knows that it can take the men of his family awhile to answer the call of carving.

His father was a trucker for 25 years in California until lightning felled a tree in the company’s yard in the early 1970s. He decided to turn it into a small totem pole for his brother.

Then his father decided he wanted to carve the world’s largest totem pole. He doesn’t have the record, but his 100-foot pole did launch a business.

"It was the biggest and ugliest pole he ever made, but it was quite a sight to see," Gulli said.

The giant totem pole caught the eye of a millionaire driving past in a Lincoln Continental. He took it home for $6,500 and contracted Gulli’s father to make carvings for added ambiance in an amusement park he was building.

"He really got into studying the pure form of what this art should be," Gulli said as he flipped through a binder he’s compiled of his father’s work.

Gulli’s father gave demonstrations of his work and incurred the wrath of some purists who believed only an American Indian had the right to carve these cultural symbols of Northwest tribes. Then Chief Mace of the Northwest Coast Indians in British Columbia heard of the brouhaha, Gulli said. He inspected the work and found it a good representation.

"We’ve been checked out," Gulli said.

He’s always upfront that he’s not an American Indian, he said, though he’s been told he would look like one if he shaved his beard.

"I’ve always been honest and fair. I’ve never tried to be a plastic Indian," he said. "Even Natives say, with your dark skin you could pass. I don’t want to pass. I feel better being honest."

Gulli grew up around wood carving but did not have the patience for it until age 25. Then he was so eager to learn he would roll his dad out of bed at 6 a.m.

In 1982, his parents bought a trailer park in Montana and moved north to manage it.

"They had a hell of a time. They weren’t making any money, so he had to start carving," Gulli said. The yard filled with bears, eagles and totem poles, but no one was interested.

"No one bought anything for about four months," he said. "Then one day he sold 11. There was crying and ‘thank you God.’ It kept them here."

While Gulli stayed in the construction industry, his father made frequent trips to California to continue his son’s lessons. Then his father had triple bypass surgery so Gulli moved to Montana to fill customers’ orders.

"After he got his strength back, he said ‘I think we can make it up here.’" Gulli recalled. "I just started working, working, working, doing everything my dad was doing."

He studied the traditions and techniques involved in totem making and struggled to make a living with his wife, Vonni, and their three children.

"If I wasn’t called to be an artist, I wouldn’t have stuck it out," he said. "But I’m happy. It’s a happy business."

Now Gulli has enough customers that he has a two-year waiting list. He’s sold poles in New York for $1,000 a foot, but most poles go for closer to $300 a foot. Gulli creates about 35 poles a year, ranging from head-high to more than 40 feet.

"You just have to get a special customer who doesn’t mind the wait," Gulli said. "I’m not doing a factory here. It’s too personal."

Gulli said no one but the artist can truly read a totem pole because of the varied meaning the symbols can have.

"You really have to study and accept it for what it is," he said. "You can be a professor in British Columbia or a Native American – or Native Canadian – and you can’t tell."

In his shop on U.S. 93 two miles north of Hamilton, Gulli has three poles in various stages from nearly done to a log merely shaved. They’re destined for Chicago, Connecticut and Oregon. The carvings will include the traditional tribal lines and less stylized figures, too.

Gulli’s father died just this side of the new millennium, but his touch is found throughout Gulli’s workshop and life.

"He worked to his last day. I still have some stuff unfinished from him that I don’t have the heart to finish," Gulli said. "Now I have no carving partner."

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