About
Jim Halpin is a Colorado artist and custom wood producer of Algonquin and Celtic ancestry. He bandsaw mills, carves and wood burns (pyrography) unique creations based on his own inspirations or yours.
Custom Milling
Mantels, Logs & Beams
Totems, Custom Carvings
Wide & Thick Slabs
Materials
Standing dead timber or recent blowdowns provide most of Jim’s raw material
Jim’s totem poles, carvings and wood burnings can depict anything, but his classic subjects have been wolves, ravens, bears, cougars, eagles, owls, beaver, dogs, whales, orcas, horses, Celtic green men, wood spirits and a special woodpecker. He uses modern power tools as well as traditional hand tools, such as chisels, gouges, mallets, adzes and draw knives.
Jim finds most of his logs and stumps in Park County and Summit County in the Central Colorado Rocky Mountains. His artwork typically includes the Northwest First Nations depiction of an in-dwelling spirit, or “inua” looking out from somewhere within the creation.
Jim Custom Mills Colorado Logs
Logger, wood carver and artist, Jim Halpin, obtains beetle kill, blow down and fire mitigation logs near his Colorado home, including Lodgepole pine, Bristlecone, Ponderosa, Limber pine, Aspen and Spruce.
Wide Slab, Live Edge Tree Boards
From these he can custom mill thick slabs or create custom beams, fireplace mantels, decorative interior or exterior posts, log furniture, table and countertops, sign boards or whatever your imagination conceives.
What is “Inua?”
Inuit Tradition
In Inuit beliefs, an inua (plural inuat, literally “possessor”) is a spirit or soul that exists in all people, animals, lakes, mountains, and plants. They were sometimes personified in mythology. The concept is similar to mana. For arctic people, human and animals are equal – All life has the same kind of soul or “life essence” (inua). This creates a predicament that, in order to survive people must kill other creatures that are like them. Recognition of this dilemma lies at the centre of hunting practice, which is based upon respect and reciprocity. The hunter will only succeed if the animal chooses to give its life as a gift in return for moral and respectful behaviour on the part of the whole community. For example, after a seal has been killed fresh water is poured into its mouth so that its soul will not be thirsty and it will tell the other seals of the respect shown to it.
Among the Yu’pik near Kuskokwim Bay of Coastal Alaska, the word yua (absolutive case form of the word yuk “human; human-like spirite”) has similar connotations as that of the Iñupiaq of Northern Alaska, who similar to the Inuit call it inua. For both the Yu’piak and Iñupiaq, the meaning is closest to an understanding of a world in which “Most Arctic peoples believe all the world is animate, and that animals have souls or spirits,” (Berlo and Phillips 161). This is a foundational belief in the continuum and interconnectivity of all life and spirit, of all that is, all that has been, and that is yet to be.