Mount Kisco Sculptor 'Sees' with His Fingertips

Blind Ambition: Carving Out a Niche, a solo woodcarving exhibition at the Gallery in the Park in Ward Pound Ridge Reservation now through Nov. 1, is the work of Mount Kisco resident Ron Davidson.

Davidson has long struggled with visual impairment; but, the Guiding Eyes for the Blind graduate refuses to allow his physical challenge to prevent him from expressing himself artistically. At age 14, he was diagnosed with a disease that damages the eye’s pupil and uvea. Four years later, an industrial accident left Davidson with a destroyed right eye and vision 70 percent diminished in his left eye.

Still he learned from his father, a police officer who was fond of building things out of wood, the skills necessary to create furniture. He worked designing and building cabinets for a school district in Kansas. In the 1990s, as his field of vision shrank, he retired. Then in 2000 Davidson’s glaucoma caused his retina to rupture, destroying what little vision remained.

He still wanted to work with wood. He also wanted to create art. He acquired a woodcarver’s knife from some friends, who instructed him in the basics: “Don’t scratch your nose until you lay your knife down,” they warned him.

Davidson now focuses his talents on creating intricate wooden sculptures as well as detailed relief carvings.

“For sculptures, I employ plastic models as guides, using a knife and various gouges to transfer what I feel to the wood,” he said in a press release. “For raised carvings, I worked out a system using a laser and guidance from friends to create a surface pattern on the wood consisting of raised lines that guided me as I carved images.”

As he labors, Davidson gauges his progress using a bamboo skewer and his fingertips.

“For me, carving has become a labor of love,” said Davidson, who lives in Mount Kisco with his wife, Becky Barnes Davidson, also a Guiding Eyes graduate, and their guide dogs, Clarissa and Lawson.

Presented by Westchester County’s Art in Parks, the exhibition will run through Nov. 1. A portion of the proceeds from artwork sales will be donated to Guiding Eyes for the Blind and the Friends of Trailside Museum and Ward Pound Ridge Reservation.

Gallery in the Park is housed in Ward Pound Ridge Reservation’s administrative building at the junction of Routes 35 & 121 South, Cross River, NY 10518. Admission is free. For more information, call (914) 864-7317 or visit http://parks.westchestergov.com/art-in-parks.