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Photo by Ryan Doris and Coolfire Studios
Cast of Carvers (from left): Chris Vierra, Andy Bergholtz, Ray Villafane, and Sue Beatrice
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After a year of art school and working in commercial sculpting since the early 2000s, St. Louis native Andy Bergholtz was quite adept at carving conventional materials, such as clay. Then, in 2008, fellow carver Ray Villafane took him to the "dark side of carving" during a sand-sculpting project in Italy.
"It was the first time I had done anything really that outside the box or any kind of carving any mediums that weren't your typical clay-type mediums," Bergholtz says. "[It] was my first sand-carving experience and his second sand-carving experience, but both of us fell in love with it, with the material, and we have been trying new things together since then."
The hard work has paid off with a new show, Carvers, debuting tonight at 9 p.m. on the Syfy network. St. Louis media company Coolfire Studios is producing the show.
The duo carves such things as pumpkins, sand, even medical marijuana. (Bergholtz now lives in California, where medical marijuana is legal.) So does the sculpting background help with unusual materials?
"It translates surprisingly well," says Bergholtz. "In fact, I think that's one reason that Ray and I take so well to these other mediums. We have a foundation in sculpture in general. There's a lot of specialty artists, who are very talented working in their own specialties, but sometimes that's where they're limited, and they don't branch out...We're applying techniques that we've learned over the past 10-plus years of doing all kinds of traditional sculpture to mediums that most people wouldn't think to apply them to."
Bergholtz and Villafane, however, have no plans to become TV stars—carving is where their true passion lies.
"We're hoping it continues that way, that this boosts our business and we can be a little more selective and take cool projects and create some really cool stuff out of this," Bergholtz says. "Really, that's our only goal. Neither of us want to be TV personalities necessarily, but we love sharing what we do with the world."
