Many get their starter toolboxes in 56572

Cutting the fog
Mila Koumpilova
The Forum - Janaury 13, 2007

Video - Listen to Izu

When Izudin Becic slices a blade into black walnut, his mind pierces through the dark fog the Balkan Wars draped over memories of his Bosnian hometown. In the hours he spends carving, he often revisits his family home in Kotorsko, before the 1990s conflict reduced it to four hollow, crumbling walls.

There, his family gathered for conversation and ferociously strong coffee around an octagonal wooden table, a carving job he took special pride in. “Everybody leaves something behind,” Becic says. “Somebody puts a tree in the ground. For me, it’s carving.”

That’s why he mourned the loss of the coffee table and other handcrafted furniture in the wreckage of the war, which flushed him out of his lifelong home. But here in Fargo-Moorhead, the 55-year-old got a second chance to create a lasting legacy of wood.

Today, Fargo’s Spirit Room unveils a traditional Bosnian living room, carved by Becic on a highly competitive $10,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. The show stays open through February.

Chipping away at the lasting trauma of the war, the project gave the refugee a renewed sense of belonging. “When I see this,” he says of the “Carving a New Life” installation, which runs through February, “I see my house and my people.”

Leaving Kotorsko

One recent afternoon, Becic bustled about the small Spirit Room gallery where he arranged most of the traditional furniture carved over the past five or so months. Giddily, he showed off his work to local carver Maynard Hemmah and his wife, Pat.

He explained vases and dishes would grace the still empty shelves lining the walls at eye level. He centered a full-length mirror, on whose frame interlocking diamond and flower engravings chased mesmerizing routes. He eased himself onto the striped sofa and propped his arm on one of the side tables, warning his visitors against setting coffee cups directly on their intricate surface: Spills lodge in the many folds and nooks.

Becic, the effortlessly chatty host, has reemerged only recently.

After Serbian troops attacked his hometown, Becic fled with his wife and two sons to Croatia, then settled in Germany. But though his family was now safe, he couldn’t leave the war behind altogether. Once a gregarious man, he craved solitude and quiet, and persistent panic attacks made it hard to pursue his career as accountant.

The family’s move to Minnesota in 2001 offered hope for a permanent new home but also deepened the sense of severed roots. Becic missed his Kotorsko house, with its mix of contemporary and traditional carved furniture.

In Bosnia, members of his close-knit family lived on the same block. Now, his siblings are scattered in Germany, Scandinavia and Salt Lake City.

But things soon started looking up. He befriended the members of the Red River Valley Woodcarvers Association, who hooked him up with a commission to craft a 6-foot bear for the now defunct Red Bear restaurant shortly after he moved to Moorhead from Pelican Rapids. Becic had only held on to a few smaller carving tools, and his new friends dug into their tool boxes and put together a starter tool set for him.

Home for good

Back in Pelican Rapids, Becic had also met a freelance writer named Joan Ellison, who had helped him out on a grocery shopping trip when he still struggled with his English. In an interview for a local newspaper story, Becic decried the loss of the coffee table, the focal point of Bosnian living rooms.

“He told me, ‘My family didn’t die; it was only a piece of furniture,’” Ellison says. “But that piece of furniture meant something to him.”

That’s how the idea to recreate a complete Bosnian living room was born. Along with Dawn Morgan of the Spirit Room, Ellison applied for the NEA grant, which was eventually matched by the Lake Regional and Lake Agassiz art councils.

Becic started work on the project in August, often logging in eight to 10 hours on end. His son, Dzenan, 32, and occasionally younger son Edin helped out, suddenly drawn to a craft that transported them to their teenage years in Kotorsko. “It always brings the memories, that’s for sure,” Dzenan says.

But for Becic, the intent focus on tracing designs in the wood also dispelled some memories, of the fighting and the 38 days he spent in a labor camp for war prisoners. He says work on the project is more therapeutic than his post-traumatic stress disorder medication.

“Without this work, I will be really crazy,” he says. “When I am tired, I don’t think about these problems. I’m really satisfied and relaxed when I see I did something good.”

Says the Spirit Room’s Dawn Morgan: “One of the things we’re interested in as a gallery is the healing power of creating art. It’s a catalyst and tool for coming back to the here and now.”

The project also features Meg Luther Lindholm’s photographs of Becic at work and in moments of reflection; lacework by Becic’s wife, Mina, and a documentary by Ellison and her daughter, Amber. Ellison, who interviewed Becic for the movie, says he spoke in torrents about his technique and motifs but found it harder to talk about the war, occasionally pausing and walking away. But he got the most emotional when he brought up his carver friends’ present.

“His voice broke at this point,” Ellison recalls. “He told me, ‘In my country, they were trying to kill me. Here, they’re bringing me a gift.”

If you go
- What: “Carving a New Life” reception
- When: 1 to 4:30 p.m. today
- Where: Spirit Room Gallery, Fargo
- Tickets: (701) 237-0230