Frank McPherson can look at a piece of decaying wood and see a work of art in the making. Frank’s wood sculptures fill the studio behind his house in Rosemont, Pennsylvania, where he lives with his wife Mary Ann. Frank's first job after college was with a company that developed commercially the world's first general purpose electronic computer. Later, he and three colleages formed their own computer company, but, Frank says, "Having accomplished everything I ever dreamed of (and a little more)," he retired at 50 from the computer industry, to begin "working in wood." He received professional training and embarked on a career as a sculptor. At 80 he is still at it.
The company Frank went to work for after college was UNIVAC (UNIVersal Automatic Computer), and the computer was the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer). It was built in the early 1940's at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering of the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, and finally assembled in the fall of 1945. Frank remembers the third ENIAC system that was delivered (to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia). He walked inside the machine, he recalls, and saw 30 tones of vaccuum tubes all around him.
Frank received a degree in economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1953, where he also received training as an engineer. After 15 years in engineering and marketing-management posts, he and three colleagues left UNIVAC in 1969 to form their own computer company, with Frank in charge of marketing. This company produced auxiliary punch-card equipment for an IBM system at first, but later the company produced a system of its own design to compete with IBM.
The year after Frank retired from the computer industry, in 1981, he went back to school for three years at the Philadelphia College of Art, and “took every course they offered in wood.” After that he studied at the Graduate School of Fine Arts of the University of Pennsylvania and at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, in Philadelphia. Frank became a prolific sculptor as well as a craftsman of tables and bowls and other decorative pieces, and continues to receive commissions. Hollowed out pieces like bowls or sections of sculptures are particularly difficult to make by hand in wood, Frank says, because it is difficult to work the lathe on the inside.
"Resurrection" stands beside the
fireplace in the McPherson house.
In 1985 Frank engaged an Amish builder to construct his studio in Rosemont. The large and strikingly designed building is both his workshop and a veritable museum. It houses his extensive collection of equipment and tools. The tools are meticulously arranged and stored, many in an old-time metal tool cabinet bought at auction. Along with some mementos and other decorative objects, the studio is also filled with many of his more than 100 works. Evident in their titles and the impetus for many of his pieces is the importance Frank attaches to the spiritual, also reflected in his dedicated service to his church.
For a sculpture title that reflects most overtly his own religious conviction, Frank was inspired by the title of a song by U2's lead singer, Bono, "Love Rescue Me." Frank's adaptation of the title was, "Love Rescued Me." This sculpture is made of white ash, walnut and padauk, a wood characterized as "exotic," from a tree found in Africa or Asia.
Frank can quickly identify the wood he used for each of his works and sometimes enjoys telling how he came by it. Whatever the source of the wood, Frank says that when he contemplates it he has to be "emotionally right" with the piece he is planning to make before he starts carving.
"Love Rescued Me," title adapted
from a phrase from a Bono song.
His "Pastor's Benediction," an abstract representation of a pastor with arms outstretched, is made of padauk and another exotic wood, purpleheart wood from the tree found in Central and South America. Frank worked for two years on this piece. A sculpture he has named "Resurrection," which is displayed beside the fireplace in the living room of his house, is made partially of spalted birch from the mountains of Pennsylvania. The base and the top are of bubinga wood, an African rosewood.
"Pastor's Benediction" is an abstract
representation with "arms" outspread.
In 1983, Frank bought at auction a rosewood log, possibly from Sri Lanka, that had been milled by Martin Guitar, located in Nazareth, Pennsylvania and makers of the acoustic guitar, as in "the coveted Martin guitar." He has made a table from this wood, and he plans to make one about every three years.
Frank purchased an additional 12 acres for his Rosemont property from an adjoining college in 1975, and before he sold it (about 10 years later) he retrieved wood from a dying stand of sassafras trees and from some pear and cherry trees. He has sold tables and small items that he made from that wood.
It's difficult to hand carve a bowl inside and out,
says Frank, shown also with his free-form table.
Frank uses wood that he has found, rather than purchased, for many of his pieces. Once when he was at Lake Mokoma, in LaPorte in Sullivan County, Pennsylvania, he got interested in a log he saw across the lake. He retrieved it, with his grown son's help, and used it to make a round cherrywood top for a table that was exhibited. A piece of partially decayed spalted elm became a small table top in his hands, to be mounted on a walnut base he has constructed for it.
Table top from partially decayed wood
gets fitted on a base Frank has made.
An unusual piece of equipment for a wood carver that is to be found in Frank's studio is a hand machine called a die grinder. With a die grinder Frank can do some carving that would not be possible otherwise for hand-made pieces. The die grinder is fitted with different-sized bits to do the carving and it revolves at 25,000 to 30,000 revolutions per minute. Over time Frank has accumulated an impressive collection of about 200 carefully stored bits, several of them picked up at auctions.
Demonstrating the use of the die grinder, Frank firmly anchors the wood to be carved in a vise that is part of a heavy workbench, braces himself against it and dons protective goggles. As he grinds, the muscles standing out on the arm holding the grinder indicate that it takes a strong person to do the work.
Checking the bit on the die grinder in
preparation for demonstrating its use.
The influence of Frank's favorite sculptor, Brancusi, is evident in many of Frank's works. The piece "Resurrection," displayed on one side of his fireplace, is one of those that are suggestive of Brancusi. For a very large piece, "Variations on a Theme by Brancusi," his inspiration was a Brancusi dovetail design. Frank re-designed it and repeated it in progressively smaller segments of a sculpture that is over 10 feet high until the design "disappears" (the top section is less than 1/2 an inch high). The trapezoid-shaped base is 2 feet by 2 feet at the bottom. The work is made of elm and has a golden look.
"Variations on a Theme by Brancusi" is
made of elm and is more than 10 feet high.
On one occasion, Frank was caught short when he was asked for the title of a work that had won the sculpture award at a show at the Wayne Art Center, in Wayne, Pennsylvania, in 1998. Someone commented that the sculpture was reminiscent of the ghosts in a painting called "Scream," and so, on the spur of the moment, Frank called the work, "Scream." "Scream" it was in a picture of Frank and his piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Subsequently, he changed the title to "The Rising." He sculpted it from smooth dark red and brown bubinga wood. The intricate carving on the inside, a special challenge for a handmade piece, demonstrates Frank's skillful wielding of his die grinder.
"The Rising" is one of many pieces for which Frank has won sculpture awards. This year a sculpture of his that was 25 years in the making and titled "Another Start" won the Best of Show award at the Wayne Art Center's show.
"The Rising": the intricate carving
of the inside is a noteworthy feat.
One of Frank's noted works is "Family Reunion," consisting of column-like pieces that many find suggestive of human figures. For different people he has made varying arrangements and numbers of the individual pieces to represent families.
Frank has received church-related ongoing commissions arising from his devotion to and active involvement with the Presbyterian Church. One is from the Philadelphia Presbytery (a ruling body of churches), for an award given annually to the outgoing Presbytery Moderator. Frank makes the sculpture out of four different kinds of wood, American elm, black walnut, West African padauk, and wild cherry.
"Family Reunion," column-like pieces that
to many are suggestive of the human form.
Another commission was for the creation of an award given by the Presbyterian Children’s Village, which provides child welfare, therapeutic, educational and crisis prevention services to children and families in Philadelphia and other areas of Pennsylvania. The award was given to the late Charles Terry, a Stated Clerk (chief ecclesiastical officer) of the Philadelphia Presbytery. The Reverend Terry was orphaned as a child and went on to a distinguished career in the ministry. The award became an annual one, and each year Frank creates what is known informally as the Charlie.
Frank contemplates an award for the out-
going Moderator of the Phila. Presbytery.
Frank Henderson McPherson was born in 1931 in Pottsville, Pennsylvania. The depression, Frank says, "moved the family out of Florida," and they were on the way to look for a house in Margate, New Jersey, when Frank was born. When he was about five, the family moved to Lower Merion, near Philadelphia, and Frank went to Lower Merion High School before going to Penn. He and Mary Ann were married in 1960 and have three grown children, a son and two daughters. They have six grandchildren – three grandsons, plus triplets, two boys and a girl.
A recent achievement of Frank's and an especially gratifying one for him was the publication of his book, And I Never Said Goodbye (Dorrance Publishing Co., Inc., Pittsburgh, PA, August 23, 2010). The book arose out of a tragedy in Frank's family, the death of his older brother, Hamilton Allen McPherson, Jr. ("Bud"), in a drowning accident on July 31, 1945, two weeks before the end of World War II.
Bud was stationed at the Warner Robbins Air Force Base in Macon, Georgia, working on radar, and he had started a Boy Scout troop in the area. He was an excellent underwater swimmer, and he was teaching the Scouts to swim underwater when he drowned, at age 20, possibly as the result of a cramp when he was at a very low depth. Frank was 13 at the time, and away from home at a camp in Maine. His parents decided against bringing him home for the funeral, so that Frank "never said goodbye."
Years later, after his mother died, Frank came into possession of a trove of 25 letters to Bud written during World War II by his friend Bill LaClaire. The book is a compilation of these letters and other writings. To many people who have lost loved ones it has apparently brought comfort, and for Frank, it has brought closure.
– Jan Oser
Back to Top
