‘There are times when we do something better than we thought we could do.’

When wood carver Walt Jacobsen spied a small cabin aboard the historic Star of India vessel five years ago, he knew he had found his niche. The carpenter’s cabin is now a cozy workshop where Jacobsen’s wood shavings float to the floor and his pet cat, Amy, eyes tourists peering in to see the Maritime Museum ship’s carver at work. Trained in fine art in Chicago while working nights at a defense factory before World War II, Jacobsen was dejected when his asthma kept him out of the military. He instead began a 27-year career in New York City working on Christmas window displays. It ended when he folded his display company, “dropped out,” and became a yacht skipper. He found a way to combine his art training, his talent for three-dimensional work and his love of the sea when he took up wood carving and moved to San Diego from Connecticut nine years ago. Two of his ship figureheads are on display at the ship’s museum, and the 71-year-old artist carves everything from whales to nameboards. Times staff writer Nancy Reed interviewed him and Dave Gatley photographed him in his workshop.

The popular concept is for a youngster to go right into college, but I didn’t know what to do so I worked about four years--I was a stock boy, and I worked on a motorboat like a laborer. It gave me time that I needed to develop a path, an aim or an anchor.

Strangely, it went in the direction of art work. This was Depression days, and I attended a class at the local park field house sponsored by the Works Progress Administration.

I was encouraged and enrolled full time in 1938 at the School of the Art Institute, in Chicago. I didn’t have the slightest idea what I would do when I got out.

I had a good teacher who wouldn’t let me get away with a pretty picture. He had such an influence on me. He gave a speech at graduating class and encouraged us not to sell out. If we agreed to do something for $200, and it took more time, he said do it right and adjust the price next time around. But do not give up your integrity in any way.

This school was important in my life. I wanted to be an artist, but when I graduated and left the school, I remember thinking as I walked down the steps, “I didn’t study art, I studied philosophy.” This school insisted on fundamentals--if you have the fundamentals of the craft, you can do anything within that craft because they lead you to a solution always.

I got a job right away in New York City working for a display manufacturer. I was painting backgrounds--stormy clouds, birds.

It was so heady, it was excitement all the time. It was like working in Santa Claus’ workshop. It was a dream world, I had a childlike view. It was 1942 and I was 27 years old. So I was developing slowly.

I had been in New York for 27 years when I quit the Establishment and became a bum in the early ‘70s.

I wanted to get away from civilized, regimented life and to see how the world looked after a year. I became a professional yacht captain for one year from Boston to Florida. And I took up wood carving.

I would visit maritime museums and was completely fascinated by beautiful ship carvings. I was attracted to them. I decided, if I had born 150 years before, that I would have been a ship carver for ornaments for ships. I thought how great it would be that after I was dead and gone, how nice it would be if my carvings were up in a museum like that.

You can’t make a living doing the work I do. But there is a special feeling that comes about as a kind of high sometimes when I carve. When I carved my first figurehead and it started to come out of the wood, I was working furiously--it was effortless. Athletes do that all the time; there are times when we do something better than we thought we could do.

Whatever we do, it’s the rewards that count, and sometimes it’s money. But in the end, we would like to do work we are proud of and pleased with and not worry about the money.

And the ultimate result is that people pick up the work and are pleased with it. And when they leave the shop, they are smiling.