Carving History
Carving History
Goodlett is known throughout Alabama art circles for his American Indian creations and as one of the founders of the state’s first woodcarving educational programs. But at that time, the largest piece he had worked was only 22 inches tall, so he suggested that he create a totem pole for the museum.
“But Butch insisted on doing Sequoya,” Goodlett recalls. “He said, ‘The Cherokee never had totem poles, but everyone recognizes Sequoya.’ So I went ahead and started it.”
Choosing a native white-oak trunk, Goodlett spent nearly two years carving the detailed likeness of the only man in the world to single-handedly develop an alphabet for a spoken language—that of the Cherokee Indians. The larger-than-life figure now dominates the small museum commemorating the area’s Cherokee history.
“It’s a marvelous piece,” Walker says. “David is a great, great woodcarver.”
The artist in Goodlett probably was born in 1958, he says, when he first opened his pocketknife and tried his hand at a relief carving.
“We didn’t have television and that sort of thing for entertainment,” he recalls. “I had a little time on my hands, so I gave this a try.”
His first carving was a primitive relief showing horses pulling a carriage with four men aboard. His second work was set in the American Revolution and depicted a cannon and soldiers, carved from a stump he’d recovered from the nearby woods. And as he continued to work the wood, his efforts paid off in ever more beautiful pieces of relief art.
Although born in Moulton, Ala., (pop. 3,260)—where he now lives on the family farm that’s been occupied since 1859 by a Goodlett—the lanky woodcarver spent the most formative years of his artistic career while he and his wife, Peggy, lived in Montgomery, Ala. It was there that he and friends helped establish Alabama’s first woodcarving school in 1986.
Goodlett now keeps busy conducting demonstrations and showing his carvings at festivals and to school groups throughout his native Lawrence County, and he regularly teaches the rudiments of woodcarving to a local Boy Scout troop.
Recently, Goodlett has been earmarking favorite pieces from his collection for his seven grandchildren, ensuring that, one day, they each get a special “Goodlett legacy.”
“I’ve done animals, Indians, pioneers, and just about every traditional kind of carving you can think of,” Goodlett says. “My oldest granddaughter, Alex Richey, who lives in Anchorage, Alaska, has asked if she can have my carving of a pilgrim.”
The pilgrim is nearly 2-feet-tall and is festooned with such details as a floppy-brimmed hat, square-buckled boots that come up to his knees, and a muzzle-loading musket.
“That was her favorite, and it’s certainly one of mine,” he says. “It’ll give her something to enjoy up there in Alaska. And it’ll remind her of me and her grandmother down here in Alabama.”
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