KITCHENER — Wood chips flutter like snowflakes to the workshop floor with every strike of the chisel.

Details slowly emerge from the block of wood – the crook of a finger, a lock of hair, the gentle curve of a neck.

Fred Zavadil is not creating a sculpture so much as revealing it, freeing it.

“I can already see the finished piece,” he says between strikes of the mallet.

That ability to envision the completed masterpiece is the gift – the “special something,” as he puts it – that sets him apart from his woodcarving peers.

Last year in Iowa, Zavadil become the first person in the 43-year history of the International Woodcarving Congress to simultaneously win first, second and third place titles for best in show.

It was such a decisive sweep of the competition that Zavadil was “almost embarrassed” by the attention. Almost, but not quite.

“That was my time of glory,” Zavadil chuckles in an accent still steeped in Czech after nearly two decades in Canada.

Although Zavadil may indeed possess a gift or “something special,” he has only learned to tap its full potential through constant practice and refinement.

He works alone for 10 to 12 hours every day in his Kitchener studio, a second-storey loft accessible by a rusty fire escape, a stone’s throw from Victoria Park.

What started as a hobby (his first-ever carving of a bald eagle was proficient but artistically unrefined) has evolved into a busy and acclaimed career.

For months he has been immersed in a detailed relief carving roughly the dimensions of a bus windshield.

The yet-untitled piece depicts seven people, young and old, in various states of play and relaxation. The piece, destined for a seniors’ residence in London, Ont., is subtly evocative of the “Seven Ages of Man” soliloquy from Shakespeare’s As You Like It.

It’s an enormous and labour-intensive work, and Zavadil has untold hours of painstaking work ahead if he is to finish it by the mid-October deadline.

Much of the piece is carved from an elm tree that was felled on the seniors’ residence property. Elm is frustratingly heavy and unyielding wood, but Zavadil likes the idea of “giving new life” to a fallen tree.

Inevitably, Zavadil sometimes grows weary or frustrated with the piece, so he returns to a smaller work-in-progress in a sunlit corner of his studio. It is not a commissioned work, nor will he sell it when it’s finished.

“I will keep this one,” he says.

Though he receives orders from around the world, and is booked solid with commissions for at least a year, Zavadil sets aside time every day to carve purely for the love of carving.

He hasn’t officially titled this piece yet – he rarely does, instead leaving that job to the buyers of his work – but he figures a decent name would be “The Dream of Man.”

The half-completed carving, approximately the size of a toddler, depicts a nude woman with flowing robes and hair ascending just beyond the yearning reach of a man.

That is, rather, what the sculpture will depict when it’s completed. The woman is still rough-hewn and faceless, and the man remains fully encased in wood, yet unliberated by Zavadil’s chisel.

But both figures have been given temporary life in clay – an exact-scale sculpture that stands on a table beside the woodblock.

Although Zavadil can see the finished wood carving in his mind’s eye, he still creates clay sculptures to aid in proportions and dimensions. The clay piece is dotted with a dozen or so pinholes – geometric reference points against which he measures his chisel-strikes on the wood.

Wood is an unforgiving medium. Hammer too hard, or misjudge the angle of the chisel, and the piece is irreparably damaged.

So Zavadil works meticulously for hours on end, utilizing an ever-finer array of tools to transform a shapeless block of wood into an intricate work of art.

He avoids power tools because they rob him of control. He dislikes painting his pieces because it masks the natural beauty of the wood.

And although he is pleased to have earned a stellar reputation and a growing list of commissions, he sometimes struggles to part with his completed carvings.

“If you spend two or three months with a piece, there is a connection,” he says.

“I’m really emotional that way. They are like my babies.”

chunter@therecord.com