While some players approach pool as competitive sport, Bill Schroeder sees the artistry.
Schroeder, a wood carver and member of The View's pool league, created a collection of miniature carvings featuring league members around a pool table that serves as a conversation piece in the Minot assisted-living center's pool room. Schroeder carved eight league members from basswood, capturing their features, stances and a little of their personalities.
Schroeder took up carving 20 years ago.
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Bill Schroeder carved members of his pool league in play. Schroeder participates in the league at The View.
Jill Schramm/MDN
"I started doing it just for something to do," he said. The self-taught carver quit after only about three years. But since moving a few years ago to The View, which has a Whittlers' Workshop, he picked up the hobby again.
The workshop is where he keeps many of his carvings, including his "Full Moon Saloon," featuring a variety of carved characters in an old saloon setting. There's the card player with the ace in his boot, the piano player, the sheriff about to take on a gunslinger and even Ole and Lena. Schroeder, from Parshall, also has carved some of his friends, including the crew at the Parshall grain elevator.
His other carvings include three-dimensional pictures and cottonwood plaques in the shape of castles.