A Hard Place

Jack Warley, the central character in “Bicycleman” at Theatre West in Universal City, has chipped away at blocks of aspen, birch, spruce and pine for 42 years, using his handcrafted chisels to sculpt intricate carvings.

Despite the thousands of dollars his 30-foot Indian heads and dolphins command, it is really Mother Earth he hopes to impress. After years of subscribing to his late grandfather’s artistic gospel to create solely for environmental purposes, the 55-year-old Jack sees his talent and lifeblood more as a burden than a boon.

“He makes his carvings the way his grandfather wanted him to and it’s moving in on him,” said Ed Moore, who plays Jack and wrote the play. “It’s left him emotionally blocked and unable to work.”

Jack’s artistic vision has become as impaired as the crippling arthritis that made his famous woodcarver grandfather, Hank, unable to lift his head. Hank relied on his peripheral vision to maneuver him through life on a bicycle--hence the nickname Bicycleman.

Jack cannot see beyond the philosophy his grandfather instilled in him, leaving him with a surplus of commissions and uncarved wood blocks.

Jack and the now-deceased Hank offered their work as a way to make amends for what they called “the slaying of the giants”--the big trees that once thickly dotted Minnesota’s Mesabi Mountain Range before the iron ore mining surge in the late 1800s.

As a blacksmith for a mining company, Hank witnessed the destruction of a once-pristine landscape. Although he sympathized with the miners’ need to make a living, it was the Earth’s cries he chose to answer.

With the idea of turning destruction into beauty, Hank took the discarded elements of the mining process and recycled them into useful instruments and works of art. He smelted pieces of iron into silvery chisels, which he deemed the magic tools that guided his carvings.

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Moore said he has always been fascinated with woodcarving.

“It’s cutting images out of wood, out of nature,” said Moore, 65. “I’d see wasted logs and mutilated trees--and I’d think so much beauty comes from wood. Wood gives us homes, furniture and art.”

Through the years, Moore has built an acting resume of stage, television and film roles. The first play he wrote, “The Sea Horse,” won a New York Drama Desk award.

While growing up in Chicago, Moore regularly visited northern Minnesota. The destruction of the Mesabi Mountain Range affected him deeply, he said.

“What used to be so beautiful, so pristine, is now a horrible-looking scar,” Moore said.

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“Bicycleman” also is about love--between Jack and his grandfather and between Jack and a lonely woman named Kate Conover (Suzzy London), who lives for her books and her students until her love for Jack forces her to change. The two supporting characters, George Gattaboni (Dick Boccelli) and his wife, Marge Gattaboni (Chi Chi Navarro), also act out of love.

Moore said he hopes his characters provoke some thought in audiences.

“It’s not a play with a half-teaspoon of depth, so I hope it evokes thought as well as entertains,” he said. “I hope people take the play home with them.”

BE THERE

“Bicycleman,” today and Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 2 p.m.; Theatre West, 3333 Cahuenga Blvd., Universal City. $15. (323) 851-7977.