Stephen Huneck

Stephen Huneck ( ; October 8, 1948 – January 7, 2010) was an American wood carver and folk artist known for creating Dog Mountain. He also authored a series of children's books featuring Sally, the first of which, Sally Goes to the Beach, was a New York Times best seller.

During his recovery from a serious illness left him in a coma in 1994, Huneck drew support and inspiration from his dogs, in particular his black Labrador Retriever Sally, who was a regular subject for his woodcuts and carvings. The following year, Huneck purchased a mountaintop farmstead in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, renaming the site "Dog Mountain". There he constructed The Dog Chapel, a replica of a traditional New England chapel filled with his carvings and other artwork and dedicated to dogs and other pets. Dog Mountain was home to Huneck's gallery and workshop, as well as was open to the public as a dog park.

After financial difficulties stemming from the Great Recession led Huneck to lay off staff at Dog Mountain, he died by suicide in January 2010.

Early life and education Huneck was born in Columbus, Ohio, but grew up in Sudbury, Massachusetts, as one of seven children. Huneck had severe dyslexia, but he found calm in exploring the woods near his home and roughly carving bits of fallen branches. After graduating from Lincoln–Sudbury Regional High School, Huneck moved to Boston at age 17 to attend Massachusetts College of Art, working as a taxi cab driver to pay his bills. He also began finding and restoring antique furniture, beginning with an old chair he noticed had been set out for trash collection. Repairing old wooden pieces helped Huneck develop his skill as a carver. and moved to Vermont, settling at the Quarry Hill Creative Center in Rochester, Vermont. There Huneck began carving wood while continuing to sell antiques. He was discovered in 1984 when Jay Johnson noticed one of his carvings, an angel carved from pine, in Huneck's pick-up truck. Johnson asked Huneck how much he wanted for the angel. Not intending to sell it and believing that the man would not pay such a high price, Huneck told Johnson that he wanted $1,000. Johnson, a Manhattan-based art gallery owner focused on folk art, bought the angel on the spot and then continued to purchase carvings from Huneck.

After recovering from the accident, Huneck and his wife purchased the property in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, that would become Dog Mountain in 1995, turning an old barn on the site into his studio. Although it was their home, the Hunecks opened Dog Mountain to the public, inviting people to bring their dogs to two annual gatherings, the Dog Party and Dog Fest, where dogs could run off-leash.

Despite his critical success, Huneck and Dog Mountain suffered financially during the Great Recession and after having to lay off a number of employees, Huneck, who suffered from depression, committed suicide on January 7, 2010, outside his psychiatrist's office in Littleton, New Hampshire.

Artistic style and works Although he was largely self-taught as a carver, a skill he developed while working as a furniture restorer, Huneck was uncomfortable being labeled a "folk artist". He noted that while the simplicity and out-of-scale proportions of his work were similar to traditional outsider art, he rejected the idea that his work was naîve. He credited his time as an antiques dealer for the 19th century look of his work, including the trompe-l'œil effect in some pieces. Outside of initial cutting and final sanding, Huneck only used hand tools, and he had an atypical carving style, drawing the blade towards himself. Much of his work was carved from Vermont basswood, along with cherry, maple, and pine, harvested from Dog Mountain. and Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont.

In 1996, for its salute to folk art at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, The Coca-Cola Co. commissioned a Coke bottle carving from Huneck, which he capped with a gold-winged cow. Huneck also received commissions for works from celebrities and politicians, including Sandra Bullock, Phil McGraw, and U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy. Huneck described his coma as a "near death experience" during which a dog-headed figure visited him and sold him "a fantastic dog sculpture that seemed to contain the secrets of life itself," inspiring him to build the chapel. The chapel, a replica of a classic white New England country church from the 1820s, took three years to complete. It features carved wooden dogs lining the pews, and dog-themed stained glass windows in its main room. In addition to standard human sized doors, the chapel has a dog door.

The walls of the chapel are covered with notes of remembrance and pictures of visitors' deceased pets. Sally Goes to the Beach spent a week in The New York Times Review of Books children's best-sellers list in 2000, and Huneck earned a silver medal at the Society of Illustrators's The Original Art competition, which honors illustrations from children's books, in 2002 for Sally Goes to the Farm.