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By her own reckoning, she created between six thousand and seven thousand carvings—three hundred to five hundred each year. By actual count, we know she carved examples of well over a hundred species of birds native to the North Country.

Photo: Martha Cooper Varick A. Chittenden is professor emeritus of English, SUNY Canton College of Technology, and executive director of Traditional Arts in Upstate New York (TAUNY). Photo: Martha Cooper

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I first met Hazel Tyrrell more than forty years ago, when a professor and mentor invited me to go with him to visit her. After winding over increasingly remote country roads, we came to her farmhouse—in memory a tiny place but, like so many Adirondack houses, efficient and snug. Hazel, a slender, homely woman in a mended work shirt and dungarees, extended her gnarled and knobby hands—man’s hands—in a firm grip. We stood surrounded by skillfully carved and beautifully painted birds in a room that was her kitchen, studio, gallery, and salesroom. Hazel Tyrrell was a typical country woman of her time. She grew up on a tiny family farm in the woods, several miles from a settlement of any size, and went to town only occasionally. She married young, her husband died early, and she and her sister-in-law Dort kept the farm going for many years. About a dozen cows, a few sheep, chickens, a big garden, and honeybees kept food on the table and two women busy. With the woods at her doorstep, Hazel was familiar with wildlife. As handy with a rifle as with axe and plow, she would bring home venison or rabbit to supplement their simple diet. Hazel Tyrrell’s carved songbirds were popular during her lifetime but are now prized by collectors as reminders of her way of life. Photo: St. Lawrence Plaindealer Typical also of most country people, Hazel was a skilled observer of nature. That ability led her, in the early 1940s, to take up carving and painting songbirds for a hobby. At first, she gave them to neighbors in exchange for work or favors. But word spread in the Canton area, and others soon found their way through the woods to her house. There was never any advertising, not even a sign in her yard. Hazel’s birds became fashionable, particularly among local college faculty and business leaders. I’ve seen several collections of fifty or more, one of more than a hundred, but I’ve discovered that practically every family that was around in her time has at least one of Hazel’s basswood-and-housepaint birds. Until her death in 1967, bird carving was Hazel Tyrrell’s passion and her livelihood. By her own reckoning, she created between six thousand and seven thousand carvings—three hundred to five hundred each year. By actual count, we know she carved examples of well over a hundred species of birds native to the North Country. Although the nuthatches, grosbeaks, jays, sparrows, and buntings—to name just a few of the birds I’ve found—are wonderful, it is Hazel’s devotion to her art that impresses me most. She surrounded herself with field guides and reference books. Canton author and friend Atwood Manley once wrote, "Best of all, Hazel studied the feathered friends who were all about, in their native and natural haunts. She learned their habits and characteristics. Hours on end, she pored over the colored plates in her bird books, seeking to select the most realistic, true colors, always on the hunt for a flaw in her own art." Examining once again the creations of this country woman who lived close to the land and its creatures, I am struck by the simple beauty of her carving, her careful attention to details of poses and coloration, and her resourceful solution to the most difficult part, the feet. Her use of twisted wire became her trademark. Hazel’s work appealed to collectors not just for its realism and its accessibility but because her way of life was vanishing, and she herself was "a character" who delighted visitors with plain talk and good stories. Similar tastes and values for art still prevail in our North Country. Contemporary artists who express abstract ideas and experiment with materials have their urbane and sophisticated following, but more common is the taste for realistic depictions of life. And that often means life with nature. For many here, art may be where nature and culture intersect. The annual summer wildlife art show in Clayton draws thousands over a three-day weekend to see and buy silver moose earrings, traditional duck decoys, and large oil paintings of blue herons and whitetails. Our public television station’s annual art auction features, almost exclusively, similar creations. And many bank lobbies and professional offices here are decorated not with raku pottery or fanciful mobiles, but with depictions of wilderness creatures. Hazel Tyrrell found in her own backyard, fields, and woods the inspiration for art that resonates way beyond her own neighborhood and time.

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