Butler Twp man creates hundreds of carvings that populate his home
BUTLER TWP — Pete DeSantis whittles wood with a knife for hours on end, but it doesn’t bother him.
It’s not out of boredom, but woodworking does keep him from becoming bored in retirement — and with the number of requests he gets from friends and family, he needs to whittle a lot to get them all done.
DeSantis, who lives in Butler Township with his wife, Dottie DeSantis, said whittling is just one of his many hobbies, but it’s one that he is still learning and improving at, even after decades.
“You can never run out of learning how to make different stuff,” Pete said. “I just whittle what I like at the time.”
Lining the shelves and tables at the DeSantis home are wooden animals, people performing tasks, elf houses, feathers, ornaments, and lots and lots of Santa Clauses. He said the Santas are now — and have always been — one of his main subjects, because when Christmastime rolls around, it’s a familiar gift to give people for the holiday.
But he isn’t tired of making them, or any other carving that could take many hours to create. As the time ticks away, so do the edges of the wood Pete whittles, each knife motion one that can never again be replicated. The uniqueness of each product of his whittling is one aspect he said makes the art special.
“I’ve always been into art,” he said. “There’s everything imaginable that you can carve. And you can’t make the same thing twice in carving.”
Pete worked as a bricklayer at Armco for 35 years, before retiring. He said he was born and raised in Butler, and got his start in whittling after getting a pocket knife.
Among the carvings in his home are a few awards, which he has won from competitions, including the Butler Farm Show, a competition, he said, his wife enters on his behalf. One of the most elaborate pieces of woodwork in the home is a carving of Noah’s Ark, complete with wooden animals of all kinds.
Pete said he doesn’t do the carving for the recognition, or even for money. He gives carved pieces to people who want them, and the competitions are entered strictly by Dottie, who said she wants people to see the work he does.
Because not only are the creations carved through hours of work — they are hand-painted by him. It’s another aspect of the art form Pete appreciates, even though it is challenging to get the color right. Because painting on a three-dimensional canvas presents challenges on its own — multiple shades of one color are often needed to get a piece looking the way it should.
“You have to have all the colors … I sit there with a dry brush and make the shadows,” Pete said.
While his skills are honed from practice — a lot of it — Pete also belongs to a carving club in Florida, where the couple also has a home. He said the club has given him some connections with other carvers, who share ideas and techniques, and he sometimes trades pieces with other members of the club.
They also do a lot of knife talk. With “30 years of knives” in his collection, Pete has a lot to work with. However, he said you don’t need a specialized knife or blade to get started in whittling.
“You name the blade and I have it,” Pete said, a container of pocket knives sitting on the floor next to his work desk. “I have taught a lot of people; you don’t need all these knives to make a good carving.”
What you do need to start carving is wood. Any kind of crafting wood can be carved, but, Pete said, he mainly works with barkwood, which has to be ordered from British Columbia, but he also works with basswood, the perfect specimens of which come from Wisconsin and Minnesota. Sometimes, he even works with walnut, but it’s one of the more difficult mediums for whittling.
Pete said he sometimes works off samples of what he wants to carve, but said it is up to the artist to “figure out what the inside” of the wood looks like.
Getting wood to work with is not hard for Pete at this point, though.
“Bark is easiest, walnut is hard,” he said. “People would give me bark and ask me to make them something.”
Pete’s creations are spread around the nation now, and he has even traveled to Europe, where he has also traded figures and knowledge. He buys some of the wooden carvings in his travels that appeal to him.
But many of them are in the DeSantis home, where a lot of Pete’s first attempts at new designs belong to his wife.
“I have one of everything he has made,” Dottie said. “He has made me some necklaces.”
Dottie also keeps numerous pins her husband has made in a case in her home, pins that also depict numerous figures and characters and that come in different sizes.
Pete said many more of his creations are in the couple’s Florida home, as are some of his supplies for whittling and painting.
As of April 15, Pete was in his “workshop” on his way to making figurines that Dottie planned to enter into the Butler Farm Show come August.
They included a man and a woman leaning on one another’s backs, a shotgun — a separate carving — wedged between the man’s hand and hip, and a dog — yet another separate carving — crouched between them.
He also had a fisherman nearly complete, his fishing line hooked to the back of his own pants creating a comical portrait. Both of these pieces still needed to be painted.
These carvings took long hours for Pete to create, but he said the end product is always worth the effort. Also worth the effort is the reaction of people who he gives the carvings to, with many Christmas ornaments, miniature shoes and little hearts being given to neighbors, friends and family over the years.
And he has not made a dime off the carvings, he said.
“I don’t sell any of it,” Pete said. “I just love doing it.”
