For Wendy Lichtensteiger, woodcarving is more than a medium. It is a family tradition—and one that has connected her to generations of artists who came before her.
Raised on Erskine Lake in New Jersey, Wendy developed an early fascination with the natural world. Birds, animals, plants, found branches, weathered wood—these became both inspiration and material. After studying Studio Art at Arizona State University, she returned to the East Coast and began a five-year apprenticeship with her father, Lance Lichtensteiger, a woodcarver whose own career has spanned decades. Wendy became a third-generation carver, learning not only the tools and techniques of the craft, but the patience required to truly observe an animal before attempting to capture it in wood.
Eventually, Vermont called.
Wendy moved to the mountains and established a woodshop of her own. Without realizing it at first, she had settled only fifteen minutes from another woodcarver whose work had quietly followed her for years: Wick Ahrens, known to many as “Moby Wick.”
Wendy had first encountered Wick's carved whale plaques years earlier when she and her siblings purchased a shop in Duck, North Carolina. Several of his whales came with the shop's inventory, and she was immediately drawn to their distinctive forms and finishes. Only later did she realize that Wick's Whales in Vermont sign was the same one her family had passed for years on childhood snowboarding trips to Ludlow.
They spoke by phone as Wendy's shop continued to sell his work, but the two never met.
Until one day, Wendy finally drove to his gallery in Weston.
They talked as though they had known one another forever—about wood and tools, paints and galleries, nature, dogs and the strange privilege of making a life by making things. Wendy found herself deeply inspired by both Wick's work and the life he had created around it.
Wick's own carving tradition had been shaped by Clark Voorhees, a Vermont artist and woodcarver who became his mentor and close friend. Voorhees taught Wick the finer points of carving and encouraged the artistic freedom that would eventually lead Wick to his whales. After studying sculpture at the San Francisco Art Institute and spending time observing whales in California and Hawaii, Wick developed the distinctive whale sculptures and plaques for which he became known.
Years later, that tradition would pass once again.
In 2012, as Wick's health made it increasingly difficult for him to keep up with his orders, he asked Wendy—the only person he could think of—to join him in his shop. Her years of carving birds alongside her father had given her an instinctive understanding of wood, tools, form and movement.
For the next two years, Wendy carved beside Wick several days a week.
He became what Wendy lovingly calls her “northern Dad,” and she became “the daughter he never had.”
Those years changed the course of her work.
Today, Wendy carries that knowledge into every whale she carves in her Vermont studio. Each is individually shaped and finished by hand, preserving the subtle irregularities and marks that distinguish something made by an artist from something manufactured. Her whales are at once distinctly her own and connected to a much longer story of mentorship, friendship and artistic tradition.
Wendy's birds reveal another side of that relationship with nature. Many are carved from century-old wormy chestnut, reclaimed wood from a tree that once dominated eastern forests before the chestnut blight devastated the species. Rather than covering the wood beneath opaque paint, Wendy often stains her carvings, allowing grain, wormholes, cracks and age to remain visible. Found branches and pieces of driftwood frequently become bases—natural sculptures incorporated into her own.
Whether she's carving the curve of a whale diving beneath an imagined sea or the posture of a bird resting on a weathered branch, Wendy's work begins with observation and respect for the living world.
Each carving carries a story: of the animal, of the wood, of the artist—and of the hands that taught hers.
