The Daily Progress
By Bryan McKenzie / Daily Progress staff writer
November 11, 2006

Call him Tom Givens. Some time ago, having scrap wood at his disposal and nothing else particular to interest him on shore, he found himself fascinated with a denizen of the watery part of the world.

“I saw a calendar of a sperm whale tail rising out of the water and I was taken by it,” says Mr. Givens, 43, as he stands astern of the nearly finished mahogany and Spanish cedar tail rising out of the intersection of U.S. 250 and Meadowbrook Heights Road. “Then I read the chapter in ‘Moby-Dick’ where [Herman] Melville describes the tail as the greatest thing in nature and that’s what I want this to represent.”

“Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony but it often bestows it,” Melville wrote of the whale tail, “and in everything imposingly beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic.” So, where other artists in Charlottesville’s Art In Place project sculpt the abstract or pay homage to totems, Mr. Givens celebrates a tail.

Lines of Beauty

The slender slats of hardwood scavenged from mill sites and joined with copious quantities of glue, undulate and bulge like the sinews and muscles of the water-bound Leviathan it represents. To loiter beneath the wood giant is to feel dwarfed as the tribute shades he who dallies there out of the sun’s rays. It takes great self-control to not shout “there she blows” to passersby.

“It seems to me, that in the whale the sense of touch is concentrated in the tail,” Melville wrote. “With maidenly gentleness the whale, with a certain soft slowness, moves his immense flukes from side to side upon the surface of the sea; and if he feel but a sailor’s whisker, woe to that sailor, whiskers and all.”

Mr. Givens’ tail, the final touches of which are incomplete, fans out far overhead. The body - balanced by spars and weights yet-to-be buried - appears to dive beneath the grass, pulling the fan with it. A firm metal rod secures the monument to a concrete pad also to be hidden and a door to the belly of the beast - soon to be secured shut - provides access during installation.

Utmost expansion

“I’m concerned that the tail will act like a big sail in the wind and if there’s a big enough wind it will just go on over,” Mr. Givens says. “That’s why it’s balanced the way it is. It’s actually larger than life and bigger than a sperm whale’s tail. I just got carried away. It’s bigger in proportion but I think it kind of helps. You want it to be seen from [U.S. 250] and I think it’ll work well.”

Going all out is a part of the parcel of Mr. Givens’ art. A piece commissioned by C’Ville Coffee sits in that shop’s child play area, a huge tortoise carved from scrap wood and tree trunk.

“I’ve been working with wood for a long time, making furniture and working in mill shops. I’ve pretty much done it all,” Mr. Givens says. “Now I’m trying to convert that experience into sculpting. I do this because I like it and it’s fun.”

If something’s fishy, wail about it at (434) 978-7271 or bmckenzie@dailyprogress.com.

Reprinted by permission