Published: April 18, 2008 08:00 am            

Sally's Antler Art born on a prayer

She prayed about a way to make a living with her hands.

Even though she breathed a very specific prayer that day more than two years ago, Woodward business owner Sally Ann Irvin never thought God would answer her prayers so immediately and fully.

“I asked God that day if he could just tell me now- make the phone ring or send someone to let me know because I didn’t want to make the wrong decision,” Irvin said. “That day, a man from my church came by and said he had been thinking about having something painted on his European skull mount (a type of antler mount) and my boss from my other job did not call that day and he was supposed to.”

It was a prayer of need and yearning asking for help with a decision to take the risk to open a business that would allow Irvin to care for her three young boys Zack, Ethan and Christopher.

But as soon as it left her lips, it began the saga of what is now one of Woodward’s best kept secrets, Sally’s Antler Art and Imports. The shoppe is tucked warmly into down town Woodward on 8th Street near Main.

If one takes the time to duck in off of Main and through the old building’s shoppe door, one can’t help but be enveloped by another era when furniture was carved, artfully and out of real need, and decorations were robust, earthy and symbolic.

The store features hand made log furniture and fixtures, early American drift wood art as well as artfully created copper lamps. raw hide lamp shades, animal skins, heavy oak table sets, candles, framed art and many other crafts.

The business started in 2003 like many great ventures do-in the garage of Irvin’s Woodward home where she created unique lamps, chandeliers, and ceiling lighting as well as other fixtures out of deer, elk, moose antlers.

She got the idea when years ago, Irvin’s father brought her a lamp made of antlers from a trip away from home.

The use of that medium as art piqued her curiosity and she began to study the antler lamp her father gave her-how it was wired and constructed.

Irvin had always been an artist, preferring her art classes at Mooreland High School to the other subjects. But, as an adult she had been working for an engineering company as a quality construction inspector up to that time. It had provided well but the hours away from home, she said, knawed in the pit of her stomach. the job meant days and sometimes weeks away from the family, a source of growing anxiety.

It was that separation angst that drove her to begin to use her skill to earn money and ultimately to see it as a career possibility.

“I really had not done anything with my art ability at that time,” she said.

And something about those antlers on that lamp drove her to create her own like it.

From there, she began working with antlers making other forms of lighting, creating each work one at a time and selling them about as fast as she could get them produced.

“The guy who gets me all my antlers sells hunts at large shows and so I would send pieces with him and he would sell them at the shows and he would get a little of the money to help pay for his booth rent,” Irvin said.

But Irvin wasn’t sure that she could turn the craft into a way to make a living that would not only support itself, but help her and her husband, Robert Irvin, support a growing family of bright, inquisitive boys.

That is when her vision of the store that she ultimately opened became firmly planted in her mind. It is now, just as she envisioned it in her mind’s eye, she said.

The building that houses her shop is the old “Gill’s” building, she said.

“Gills was a surplus store, “ Irvin said. “We knew it as the everything store and I still remember as a child, since I worked busing tables at my uncle’s cafe, that I would get off and come over here and walk through this building and look at all the stuff he had here.”

She said by the time it became an option for her store, though, the building had been long deserted by Gill’s and was being used by its owners, Ken and Carol Shean, for storage.

“That was really a blessing too,” Irvin said. “The Sheans felt bad about how bad the building was but finally, decided to let me use it and renovate it.”

Part of the renovation was the refurbishment of the antique metal ceiling tile that graces the room. Together with husband, Robert, the two turned the empty storage area into the showroom it is now where she not only exhibits her own antler art, but uses it as a showroom for many local artists.

“I like to feature art from around here so that people have a place to showcase their art without having to pay a fee,” she said.

There are still times, said the still struggling business owner, that she calls out again to God and fear grips her. They are those times-, slow weeks or months-when all she is able to hear is the word recession and it makes her wonder again if she did the right thing.

“Recently, it had been a long, slow two weeks and all of a sudden, a man walked through my door who was from Houston,” Irvin said.

Irvin said the man had seen her featured on an OETA special and has promised himself that the next time he was in Woodward, that he would come in to see the store. That was a year ago.

That day, she said, the man commissioned her to do a carving for him.

“Each time I think, I don’t know if I can do this, God shows himself to me in someone who walks through that door and I find a way to continue.”

        

• Click to discuss this story with other readers on our forums.