ONE DAY Omar Ward stepped into a workshop where some guys were carving and that moment changed his life. Now 17 years later, Omar is fashioning pieces with such a wow factor that people are easily duped into thinking they are something else.
“Two weeks after leaving school, I still did not have a job. One day my coach’s wife asked me if I had a job yet and I said no. She said that she would link me with somebody to get a job,” said the 34-year-old.
“She sent me to a workshop and I saw some guys carving. I thought it was a very easy thing to do, but looks can be deceiving and when I started I was crashing everything I touched. I was the laughing stock almost every day for the guys in the workshop,” he said, laughing at the memory.
Omar was determined to become good, even great at the task, and as much as his fellow carvers laughed at him, he told them that one day they would mistake his work for theirs.
“And it has happened that they started taking my work for theirs,” he said.
“I strive for excellence and I like to be sharp. I like to create carvings and put the right concept to it and from there bring my creations to life.”
The former national amateur boxer said that he liked to see people’s reactions whenever he sat down to work.
“People mistakenly believe that it is a cast, but I like to see people’s reactions when I carve something in front of them, especially when I am on the highway, I like to show people what talent is like in the country,” he said.
Ward, who has done a few exhibitions showcasing his work, has also entered the National Independence Festival of Creative Arts (NIFCA) and captured two gold and two silver medals for his efforts. Asked if he had intentions of entering this year, he said that despite having had a very good experience he had no intentions of competing again.
Omar’s tools are coral, a ratchet, an axe and a float.
The coral he uses is sourced at Chapel Quarry in St Philip. And he explained that each piece of coral was different, just as each person’s fingerprint is different.
“When you chop them with the hatchet some may be hard, some may be soft, and some may even be shelly, while others may be flaky. So each job calls for the right consistency of coral and I can go through three or four different blocks before finding the right block to carve a Barbados green monkey, for example.
“When I make one monkey, and can’t source another block of the same texture, the challenge then is to make the other monkey look like the first because they are a pair. I might find the same texture a week later, but not every job allows for that time,” he explained.
The father of one, who mainly does works for villas and has his work on display at Limegrove Lifestyle Centre, said that the length of time spent on a carving was dependent on the size and how much detail a carving required.
“One carving can take as little as four days to do and as much as two weeks depending on the intricate work to be done,” he explained.
There are about ten coral carvers on the island.
“ . . . . Most of them work together, but I have branched out by myself and try to make it happen,” he said proudly.
His high season is around Christmas as he explained at that time of the year was when people may want a carved table or lamp, or guard wall ornaments.
“I try to let people come and say what they want beforehand and get as much work done so nobody would be disappointed. A customer may be paying me so and so amount of dollars to do a job, but I would envision it and tell the customer that piece would not look good there. I would then transform it into something that may be simpler and cost less money, but I rather lose a few dollars giving people a proper job and being honest,” he said.
Asked if there was any special method used to preserve the unique appearance of the coral, he said he applied a solution to it.
“If it is left uncoated it can get mossy and the carvings would lose their beauty so I usually apply a coat of Aqua Glaze to my creations which lasts a long time and repels the water. However if that ever happens a solution of clorox and water could be used to return the carvings to their original state,” he said.
His ultimate goal is to carve the faces of the nation’s National Heroes on the side of the Treasury Building in The City.
“I would really like to do that. It won’t be easy because it would involve a lot of up and down carving and looking at it from a distance to ensure it looks like what it is supposed to, and it would take a few months to complete, but I can see myself doing it,” he said excitedly.