Feathered friends: Festival features wildlife wonders, artists’ achievements

Published 3:27 pm Saturday, January 3, 2015

FILE PHOTO | DAILY NEWS  EXQUISITE EXAMPLES: These two carving provide proof of the quality of artwork found at the East Carolina Wildlife Arts Festival and North Carolina Decoy Carving Championships held annually in Washington.

FILE PHOTO | DAILY NEWS
EXQUISITE EXAMPLES: These two carving provide proof of the quality of artwork found at the East Carolina Wildlife Arts Festival and North Carolina Decoy Carving Championships held annually in Washington.

 

One of Washington’s longest-running festivals celebrates 20 years of existence when it returns downtown the weekend of Feb. 6-8.

The East Carolina Wildlife Arts Festival and North Carolina Decoy Carving Championships, started by the East Carolina Wildfowl Guild and now managed by the Washington Tourism Development Authority, draws some of the best wildlife artists, decoy carvers and wildfowl callers in the nation. It also brings customers to area businesses and visitors to the city during what is the slowest time of the year (when it comes to sales) for most of those businesses.

The festival is a celebration of the time-honored artistry of decoy carving, from simple, unadorned decoys used to entice waterfowl to land on bodies of water to intricately carved, detailed decoys that are more art masterpieces than functional decoys. The festival also showcases wildlife art, from paintings to sculptures.

For the first time, the festival opens to the public on a Friday. In years past, the festival was open to the public on Saturdays and Sundays. A one-day pass costs $10, with a three-day pass costing $15. Children under 12 years old attend the festival at no cost.

The guild presents the carving championships. This year, the Harlequin drake is species for the North Carolina carving championship and the decorative head carving championship. Sea ducks — including all species of smew, long-tailed duck (old squaw), scoter, eider, harlequin, red-breasted merganser and common merganser — are the waterfowl featured in the Pamlico gunning pairs carving contest. This year’s Tar River Annual Decoy Event carving competition will feature old-squaw drakes, as will the O’Neal’s Drug Store Carolina gunning division contest.

First-in-show prize monies range from $1,000 to $100, depending upon division.

The city’s tourism website — www.littlewashingtonnc.com — has a link to the festival’s website. (Click on the “Arts and Culture” icon, then scroll down that page to the “East Carolina Wildlife Arts Festival” link and click on it.) Another option is to simply visit www.ecwaf.com to access the festival’s website.

 

 

 

 

 

About Mike Voss

Mike Voss is the contributing editor at the Washington Daily News. He has a daughter and four grandchildren. Except for nearly six years he worked at the Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, Va., in the early to mid-1990s, he has been at the Daily News since April 1986.
Journalism awards:
• Pulitzer Prize for Meritorious Public Service, 1990.
• Society of Professional Journalists: Sigma Delta Chi Award, Bronze Medallion.
• Associated Press Managing Editors’ Public Service Award.
• Investigative Reporters & Editors’ Award.
• North Carolina Press Association, First Place, Public Service Award, 1989.
• North Carolina Press Association, Second Place, Investigative Reporting, 1990.
All those were for the articles he and Betty Gray wrote about the city’s contaminated water system in 1989-1990.
• North Carolina Press Association, First Place, Investigative Reporting, 1991.
• North Carolina Press Association, Third Place, General News Reporting, 2005.
• North Carolina Press Association, Second Place, Lighter Columns, 2006.
Recently learned he will receive another award.
• North Carolina Press Association, First Place, Lighter Columns, 2010.
4. Lectured at or served on seminar panels at journalism schools at UNC-Chapel Hill, University of Maryland, Columbia University, Mary Washington University and Francis Marion University.

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