The Wood According to Dusan Jocic

When times get tough, Dusan Jocic takes to the woods . . . with a chisel and file.

During the recession of the mid-’70s, the aerospace electronics engineer found himself with a lot of time on his hands. While hiking with his wife, Coral, he started seeing animal shapes in the chunks of wood lying about, and for the last 19 years he’s been slowly liberating those hidden shapes with his hand tools.

A stocky, neatly bearded man with an abundance of vitality, the 57-year-old seems incapable of picking up one of his hard wood creations without caressing every curve with his hands. One can’t blame him: His scavenged sculptures form a richly detailed, tactile-pleasing menagerie from eagles to manta rays.

“When I see the right piece of wood, straight away I know what it will be. But sometimes it takes two or three months to find such a piece,” Jocic explained, in a thick accent that owes as much to his Australian wife’s influence as to his Yugoslav upbringing.

He does his carvings in native Californian woods, including redwood burl, manzanita and madrona, that he has found by roadsides or while hiking, being careful, he says, not to disturb any environmentally sensitive areas. One reddish-black seal he carved was from a piece of unidentifiable fire-damaged wood that had washed down from Topanga Canyon.

“I’m not looking for a piece of wood that’s perfect. I like to revitalize something that has been cast off but is still strong. People always wonder what happens after death. This wood is just dead, but you can revitalize it, make something out of it. That is what fascinates me,” he said.

On many of his works, a part is left unfinished. A commanding eagle with a four-foot wingspan was carved from a single chunk of redwood burl found in the Sequoia National Park. While most of it, from the talons to the beak, is finely detailed, near the end of the wings it reverts to being a time-worn log. The same is true of a snake, which instead of having a tail is just a raw stick at one end, looking the same as he found it in a desert near El Centro.

“That’s my mark, the signature. I like leaving it like that,” Jocic explained, pointing to the eagle. “This guy I just couldn’t resist sculpting, because I could just about see the bird in there. But I always like to leave a piece of it alone, some natural evidence of what it was.”

Except for some reindeer he’s been making recently out of 4-by-4 lumber, Jocic never buys his wood.

“I don’t believe in buying it. Why get a manzanita bough for $20, when you can go into nature and find the same manzanita bough for nothing? And you’re getting the fresh air, your tension is gone. It will do you good for your soul. I think it’s healthier. We love to go hiking like crazy.”

And when he finds a piece of wood that suggests a sculpture to him, Jocic says he can’t wait to get it home.

“Whatever I’ve seen in the wood there, I have to translate it at home in the rough right away. Then I’m OK. If I don’t do it straight away, it might go. You lose what you saw in it. You have to do it on your impulse. If you do that, you got it,” he said. It often takes him several months to complete his vision. The madrona he used to sculpt a heron, he said, was far harder to work than marble is.

Jocic has no formal art training and says he’s incapable of even drawing the figures he painstakingly extracts from the wood. He thinks the carving talent may be in his blood.

“Eastern Europeans do a lot of it. In the harsh winters, it became a natural talent. Otherwise, what are you going to do all season? So they sit by the fire, have tales, a man gets a knife and starts whittling something. And as a kid you’re always repairing something--you have to make things last--so you get pretty good with your hands.”

One thing he’s lacking lately is an audience for his works. When he lived in Westwood--he moved to Anaheim in 1985--his work was often displayed in art association exhibits or galleries. He still donates a few sculptures a year to the KCET auction. He once loaned a few to the Braille Institute in Los Angeles for its students to touch. One of the carvings they selected was of a man’s head, on which Jocic hadn’t yet done the eyes. He left the sculpture without eyes in memory of the experience.

“That’s what art is all about, enriching the culture, giving something to people to enjoy. This work here doesn’t belong to me. If there’s any merit to it, it really belongs to the people to enjoy,” he said.

Though Jocic doesn’t presently have a local venue for others to see his art, he has redoubled his sculpting efforts in the last three years.

“I’ve been having the pleasure of being laid off from Rockwell in ’89. When I can find it, I do consulting work now. When I can’t, I go in the yard or do my carvings,” he said.

In his small office in his home, he has a computer setup, currently tarped in plastic, that he uses for his consulting. On the wall are several award plaques, including a Presidential Achievement Award signed by Ronald Reagan saluting his work on the space shuttle during his Rockwell years.

Then in another corner is his workbench, where lately he has been busy carving the fanciful reindeer, which he has been talking to a local nursery about carrying.

He said: “The art has been a therapy for me. I have felt a pressure since I came to this country, not knowing the language, not having the education. I went through trade schools in New York, paying my way by working nights. I expanded to be able to do design work, specializing in transformers and inductors and so on. I went to night school to get a degree in computer science. I’m a self-made man, and I’m very proud of it.

“I mastered my profession. I’ve given lectures, seminars, presented papers on the state of the art of today’s technology, and in these 29 years have accomplished everything I ever wanted. And now, because of the recession, I’m supposed to just sit at home watching the television, doing nothing? If I were just sitting around contemplating, I’d go crazy.

“Because you can go crazy very fast. But, when I get frustrated, I have my art. This art has helped me keep my health, and my outlook on life straight and clear. With that I’m the richest man in this world.”

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