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Ducks Unlimited Podcast is a constant discussion of all things waterfowl; from in-depth hunting tips and tactics, to waterfowl biology, research, science, and habitat updates. The DU Podcast is the go-to resource for waterfowl hunters and conservationists. Ducks Unlimited is the world's leader in wetlands conservation.
Katie Burke: Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the Ducks Unlimited podcast. I'm your host, Katie Burke. And today on the show, I'm going back to the North American Decoy Collector Series I have on the show, Josh Brewer. He is a decoy carver and wildlife artist. Welcome to the show, Josh.
Josh Brewer: Thanks, Katie. Thanks for having me.
Katie Burke: I'm just gonna kind of own my own stupidity here. I didn't know about you until Al called me and I don't know how I didn't know about you. How have you flown under the radar?
Josh Brewer: Well, I, uh, so I, I carved professionally for like the first 10 working years of my life. And, uh, but after that I became a family medicine doctor and I did kind of disappear. So I have kind of been out of the conversation for a while until I decided to come back to it full time.
Katie Burke: That makes sense, because I think I came into this during while you were practicing medicine. So that makes sense why I didn't know who you were.
Josh Brewer: Every rare once in a while, like something would come up at Guyette and Dieter or whatever, and I'd see that and I figured, well, I'm not entirely gone, but it felt like I was gone.
Katie Burke: Yeah, we'll get into all that. But yeah, when Al mentioned you, I had to look you up and I saw your work and I was like, how do I not know who he is?
Josh Brewer: Thanks. Nice to be able to come back to it. I'm enjoying it.
Katie Burke: Yeah. No, your work is incredible. I really like it. Thank you. Yeah, so I also… Other thing, you came up today. I was talking to Grayson Chester this morning. Oh, sure. Great guy. And he called me. He's doing an interview for this book we're doing about candy goose hunting and decoys. And he's talking about hunting on the East Coast for that, doing an interview. And you came up and he mentioned how he met you when you were in high school, I think it was. Yeah.
Josh Brewer: We've, you know, Grayson lived very close to some of my family. I mean, he's always been there. My family kind of went in and out, but he's a, he's truly a living legend. So neat to get to talk to him from time to time.
Katie Burke: So Grayson has like this incredible recall. Have you ever noticed that about, do you know that about him? His memory is pretty great.
Josh Brewer: He's pretty encyclopedic.
Katie Burke: Yes. It's at his fingertips. Yeah, and he said that, I can't remember how old you were, but that you just, y'all were at a show together and that you just came up to him and was like, are you Grayson Chester? I wanted to meet you.
Josh Brewer: Well, we just saw one another, and I just reconnected with him at a little show in Cape Charles, which is turning out to be a real decoy carving and collecting mecca. It was only in its second year, but one of the strongest shows I've seen. Yeah. And I just got a chance to talk to him. I had met him previously, but it had been sort of in passing, and I thought he wouldn't remember. But never make that mistake with Grayson. He's likely to remember.
Katie Burke: Yep, he will remember. No, it is impressive. We actually just… I think his interview comes out next week. I interviewed him when I was up for Easton. And yeah, his memory is… Yeah, it's impressive. So were you born on the Eastern Shore? Is that where you started?
Josh Brewer: I was, right in the middle of the Eastern Shore of Maryland, just outside of Salisbury. But yeah, I grew up hunting on the Chesapeake, the little tributaries of the Chesapeake. And I was kind of lucky because the Ward Museum was in I say my backyard, but I mean it was like a 10-minute drive. So really close. And I got to see, when I first started carving, there were still a lot of folks around who have since passed, but who were really influential in starting a lot of the collecting and preserving sort of that first generation of recognizing the decoy as like real folk art. So those legendary figures, some of them were definitely still around, and I was lucky to meet them and get to know them.
Katie Burke: Yeah. So did you start hunting and like being in the outdoors prior to carving or was it kind of all at the same?
Josh Brewer: They kind of came in rapid succession for me. I was trying. I sort of have to remember my life for things like interviews. So I thought this morning about it. And I think the first dabbling I did with anything like a, uh, I'll call it an art form. I don't really know what you call fly tying because it's really cool and it's exciting. I started fly fishing when I was eight and I got into flying ties and tying flies immediately thereafter. And I was just obsessed with it. And I was like, one-on-one names with the guys at the L.L. Bean fly shop up in Maine. I would order stuff and try to copy it and things like that. I always took the outdoors and wanted to make things. I was always inspired to make things from what I saw. Fly tying was the first thing, but a year later, my dad took me on my first duck hunt. I think Weeks later, I carved my first decoy.
Katie Burke: Okay. So, does your dad make things?
Josh Brewer: Like, do you come by that naturally? A little bit. We lost my dad last year, but he was a fantastic cabinetmaker and furniture maker, and dad was really into history, too. He taught school for a living, but in his summers, he would either build houses or do colonial Williamsburg furniture reproductions, things like that. He was a really skilled craftsman. had a good eye. I always, as a kid, wanted to be in the shop with him.
Katie Burke: Yeah. So you kind of came by that doing things with your hands. Yeah.
Josh Brewer: Yeah. It was funny. The byword in our family was that he made square things and I made round things. The decoy kind of fit. We did collaborate a little bit on boats and that was fun because they're a real combination of the two.
Katie Burke: Yeah, that's true. Yeah, I actually, my previous job slash life before Ducks Unlimited, I worked at the Philadelphia Independence Seaport Museum in Philadelphia and they have the boat shop there. So I have zero background in boats because I'm from, I'm in Mississippi. But I learned a lot about boats and I have since forgotten a lot about boats.
Josh Brewer: There are a lot of carvers, a lot of old carvers who really did a lot of boats. It's kind of neat to see that. A lot of them made skiffs or hunting boats, but some of them made large boats or were somehow involved in maritime trades.
Katie Burke: Yeah, we had quite a few hunting boats at that museum, and I was always kind of shocked by it, I guess, which makes sense. I mean, you're already making the tool to hunt with, right? So then you need the boat to hunt with, so you might as well just make all the things you need, if that's your mentality. I also get… People want to give me boats a lot for the museum, but unfortunately, we have nowhere to put boats. But they're probably my most… I guess because they're hard to find places for them, but they're probably the most thing people call me about are cool boats. Yeah.
Josh Brewer: And it's such a connection to history and they're obviously so… Kind of like a decoy, a boat is locally connected. It's for a certain type of water, for a certain region, the way people did things. So a lot of tradition handed down in those things.
Katie Burke: That's fun. So what made you think to make a decoy? Did you already know about hunting over wooden decoys? Like why?
Josh Brewer: Well, kind of. I mean, that was the only thing I knew. At 11, when my dad first took me duck hunting, that was my first time out in the field. And that was over over wood decoy. Actually, they were cork decoys, but they were pretty old local birds that I later found in a book, a pretty famous book, like Henry Fleckenstein's Decoys of the Mid-Atlantic. They weren't highly valuable, but it was really neat to see what I was hunting over was already in a book. I was blown away by that. Of course, we didn't get to hunt over them after that. Dad pulled them from the rig.
Katie Burke: And then plastic made its way in. Yeah, I mean, it does with everybody. So where did your dad get those decoys?
Josh Brewer: Do you know? A friend. I mean, they were carved by a guy in Vienna, Maryland, and hunted on, I believe, the Wicomico River or the Nanticoke. I think they actually went to a hunt club on the Wicomico. So one of dad's friends was just somehow connected to that or received them. These things, I mean, they just weren't very valuable all the time they were being hunted with. You often hear guys say, well, make sure you get the lead and the lines before you throw that decoy away in old texts and stuff. That's the truth, as they were considered fairly expendable, which I guess is why the few that really survived well are thought so highly of.
Katie Burke: That's true, like, what could survive the time. Also, like, I guess, it's like with furniture too, like, it speaks towards the craftsmanship of the object to what could survive. But yeah, that's interesting to think about. Yeah, see, it's so foreign to me because you grew up in a place with all that history and all of the object itself. And I mean, I grew up in a place with lots of duck hunting history, but we just didn't have the objects to go with it, right? Right. So it's just, it's, I can't imagine, like, the commonality of having an old decoy to hunt over. Does that make sense? Yeah. It's not odd to you that you hunted over cork decoys.
Josh Brewer: Only in retrospect. I look at it now and I think it's so against the probability that a decoy lasts a hundred years. I mean, yes, they're made well. And the old guys who were great craftsmen, I was just reading an article about him. You might know him because he was a Illinois carver, Stephen Lane. And he was probably one of the best craftsmen, as far as I'm concerned, of the decoys, and his joinery was so good. Those things have lasted very well, and I honestly think you could still use them in many cases, just because the joinery was so good. They were tight, they're sound, the wood selection was good. But I don't know about you, but when I look in the bottom of my duck boat, I say, how in the world is anything going to last? And I have to really baby my decoys when I take them out because I don't want to ruin them. I want my kids to have them. But it's against the odds for a decoy in original condition, original paint, to ever make it. I don't think they were ever intended to stay in original paint. That was a summer job to clean them up, repaint.
Katie Burke: Yeah, it's true. I doubt… I mean, it's a business, right? They needed them to come back and want them repainted. And they didn't make paint… In a way, it is better in some ways, but they didn't make it back then for that sort of purpose. It's not really what they were using it for or what the paint was made for. It is a business. We were talking about this yesterday with Dave Nebon, or two days ago. It's a business, primarily and foremost for these guys. This was a business, which is very different than how we… I mean, yes, you're making a living off of it too, but it's… Will you let yourself be called an artist? Because a lot of these guys won't be called an artist.
Josh Brewer: Do you allow it? It doesn't really matter. I mean, I've answered to a lot worse. I think entirely my drive for this is it's two pieces, but it's mostly internal. Um, yeah. At the end of the day, I'm fortunate to not usually care too much what people think. I mean, if you make it and you put time into it, you want people to enjoy it. And there is a lot of satisfaction from that. But, um, I think even if you strip that away, I, I somehow, and for some reason that I don't even know, uh, I just enjoy it. Um, and it doesn't get old to me.
Katie Burke: Um, and I'm always wanting to make it different. Well, I mean, so that's, that's, so I want to go through this. Okay. We keep skipping ahead. Yeah. Right. All right. So let's go back to your 11 year old, 13 year old self. So when did you carve that first decoy?
Josh Brewer: How old were you? I think I was 11 when I finished my first one.
Katie Burke: You were 11, okay. So, and then from there, what is your trajectory carving-wise, like from there? How does it progress?
Josh Brewer: I mean, like anybody in the very beginning, it's kind of, I guess, like if you play guitar in the beginning, You find a family who's willing to listen to you in your own house, and they put up with all of the poor efforts. So I did a lot of carving. Thankfully, in my youth, where you don't think too much about whether it's good or bad, you know, adults come at it with this desire to be good at it instantaneously. Kids are having fun, and lo and behold, frequently if you do something as a kid and you put the time in, you get the opportunity to be proficient. For the first two or three years, I was learning my way around hand tools and what made a good decoy, what decoys laid on their side when I threw them out in the water, what didn't work. I think by the time I was 16 or 17, I was selling quite a few decoys. I sort of put myself through college selling decoys. And I was really into competitive decoy carving. There was this big competition in Ocean City that a lot of decoy folks know about, the Ward World Championship. And it's a mecca of really talented folks from all over. Huge contingents from all over the country, but Canada's well represented. In the past, Japan has been well represented. So, I thought that was really cool to see this sort of international community of bird artists, and I got into that. I did fairly well at some of their competitions. I was able to be a judge at some of the shows for the World Championships, and that really was interesting to me, but I was always a traditional decoy guy. I loved the old birds still. Really enjoyed just kinda making what i saw in my mind and if you're not careful if you really design your work around the show or a competition you give away some of your creative freedom now some people are cognizant of that and really bring new mindset new efforts to those shows and that's great i just kinda found my home. outside of competition after I was about 17. I really kind of focused just more on traditional decoys, flying birds. I got kind of interested in Audubon's work and started doing flying birds in an older style like that Audubon type work. And I was starting to sell it. And I had to decide at the end of college whether I was going to go to graduate school or whether I was going to carve for a living. And I said, no, carving is really enjoyable. I stuck with that. And you know, I didn't really even get a lot of raised eyebrows from family or friends or anything like that.
Katie Burke: You had evidence of success. So it's one thing saying you're going to go be a carver for a living and you've never proven that you're any good at it. And then there's another thing to have some success and be like, well, okay, I think he'll be fine.
Josh Brewer: That helped. But it also helps to have encouraging people around you. I mean, I really did. My parents were always very encouraging. My grandparents were encouraging. I had friends that were encouraging. They were just, you know, they always thought it was cool. And I never had this sort of desire to do something that everybody else thought was great. So that actually saved me my first round from going to graduate school. I didn't feel the need to be anything other than a decoy carver. I was happy with that.
Katie Burke: So, I have a question. So, to go back to you in high school. Yeah. Why did you choose to do pre-med versus say art?
Josh Brewer: That's a good question. I'll be honest, I didn't really ever want to let anyone into my art as far as like influence or I didn't, I was kind of laser focused on what I wanted. And that was, you know, Well, on one side of the coin, that was a good bold move. On the other side of the coin, I missed out on a lot of really good classical education I could have gotten. So I mean, there's good and bad to that decision.
Katie Burke: So I don't know if you've listened to, I interviewed Cameron on here and McIntyre, and we talk about this quite a bit. And I think also I interviewed another one that's not in decoys, but Adam Grant, who, okay, Adam Grant, that's a different, that's an author. Oh, Adam Grimm, excuse me. And he talks about art school as well. And I wonder, like, well, with Adam Grimm, he was doing something so specific, right? He knew exactly what he wanted to do. So I think that would relate to you in some ways. But then with Cameron, he was able to kind of go between, because he also was very interested in landscape. painting. So I think it's interesting to see what people who are laser focused and what they want to do like in art school and how they fare in art school. Like for myself, And, like, I left. I didn't want to do it. I went to history instead because I didn't like art school. And then, like, and Adam just left and did his, went back to doing what he was doing. And then Cameron stayed and did the, and eventually left, but did the landscape thing and found his avenue there. But it's interesting to see. I would have liked, you will never know, but it's interesting to think about what that would have done for you as someone who knew what he wanted. Right. Yeah, and we will never know, obviously.
Josh Brewer: But yeah, it's true. You don't get a chance to go back and see what you would have done in formative years. I would say one thing that I did that I probably kind of forgot, but it did help me and it probably helped my carving was I took every photography course you could take at my college. So, I was a biology student, but I was in the dark room most of the time. That's probably what I remember the most about college. I never really turned that into a business or anything like that. Where did you go to school? It was fun. I stayed home. So, on the Eastern Shore, we have Salisbury University.
Katie Burke: That was where I… Yeah, so you were studying decoys all the time.
Josh Brewer: I was, yeah. I used to go with my decoys in the back of my truck. I don't know. I don't know if I could still do that.
Katie Burke: I was thinking about, I was reading that article that North American Decoy Collectors did this morning, getting ready for this, and I was reading the part. So who was the curator? Tell me about him first.
Josh Brewer: Oh, Sam Dyke.
Katie Burke: Okay.
Josh Brewer: Yeah. Sam was a great, great guy. He was a Salisbury guy. He was a forester, I think, by trade. He loved decoys. He was very passionate about it. He was also really into birding. I had an ornithology professor at Salisbury University and we all kind of knew one another and would end up at the same place if a rare bird showed up or whatever. I would see Sam and talk to him and we would usually get to talking about birds. I think he was instrumental in kind of some development of the marsh where I grew up hunting. It was a big public project, the Deal Island Wildlife Management Area, which used to winter a lot of waterfowl. Really great impoundment system, and it was made in the 70s. I'm guessing that was in our area pretty early on in wetlands conservation. We always had something to talk about, whether it was duck hunting or birding or decoys, but I feel like he taught me a lot about decoys.
Katie Burke: Yeah, so the one thing they wrote in that article, and I was thinking about this like as my own job as a curator, is that you would go to the ward and sketch and draw. That would make me so happy as a curator if I saw some kids in there. Did they like you? Did they like talk to you a lot after you showed up, kept showing up?
Josh Brewer: Yeah, I mean, I think that was a real benefit of just kind of lingering there, especially quietly if you're going to be in a museum. But yeah, it was good. I got to know most everybody there. I don't remember a bad association at all with that museum. It was a great experience.
Katie Burke: I mean, if that would happen to me today, if I kept seeing the same kids show up, I'd probably take stuff out of the case for them. I'd be like, yeah, okay.
Josh Brewer: Yeah, you're interested. Yeah, it was great. A really, really good place to see. I mean, that was a lot of decoy and wildlife art history under one roof. I know. It spanned a lot of years. I mean, the oldest decoys to the brand new stuff that was really amazingly decorative or realistic. I get to see a lot.
Katie Burke: So when you started doing the, so what ages were you doing the award competition? I'm guessing you were doing decorative stuff.
Josh Brewer: Probably like 13 through 20, something like that.
Katie Burke: So I have a question about that. So what do you think from doing the ultra decorative stuff? What do you think that, did you think that anything from that helped you into your working decoys and what do you think that would have been?
Josh Brewer: Well, I mean, you have to know anatomy to do that. You can't make it up. Because the guys who put their time and women who put their time into that art form, they learn the birds inside and out. And so you get comfortable with putting a bird in a very different pose, wing out or flying, etc. And so your working knowledge of it has to be really good. Um, and that was to know that you were going to make something that was going to undergo that scrutiny, uh, really accelerates you into learning how to do it. Right. Yeah. So I love that. Um, some people are really great at maintaining the artistry and all of the detail. I think my passion for it kind of, I like some of the abstract that falls into it. Um, there was this great Carver who, I don't know if he still goes there or not. His name was Greg Woodard.
Katie Burke: Yeah, I don't know his name.
Josh Brewer: He's out in Utah, did mostly birds of prey, but he would do this sort of, he'd do decorative carvings with this abstract oil paint built into it. And I just thought they were beautiful. And I thought they were kind of, you know, they were the, they were the unplugged version of it. And you could kind of see so much coming through. Other people can maintain the tightness of a decorative bird and still bring their art out. Pat Godden's a great example. He's shaped it. He's shaped the whole art form a lot and he's fantastic at it and inspiring. I just kind of learned that I was, you know, my interests were a little bit outside of the box that I was in.
Katie Burke: Yeah. So do you, I've never had someone who did both on here, so that's why I'm curious. So, when it comes to working the wood for the decorative versus the… I mean, I know the process for like a working decoy and how y'all hand chop and all that stuff. We've gone into that a few times, but were you able to take any of the skills from the decorative to the working and what was that really? And how do you do that maybe differently?
Josh Brewer: Yeah, I think that showed up. I mean, I don't think any of it was necessarily intentional. It's just kind of who you are and what you bring to it. And you'll see this in old carvers as well. You'll see some people who pay more attention to build detail. Some people leave them more blocky shapes, and they can be beautiful either way. But, you know, my build detail is probably different. The way I set eyes is probably a little bit different in my birds because of my decorative background. I have sometimes a hard time working back to abstract because the realism comes so naturally from that background. And even, you know, I found this when I came back to it, this second iteration of Carving for a Living, I think medicine changed the way I carved as much as anything else. My biggest concern when I knew that I needed to get back in the shop and I really wanted that to be part of my life was, did I forget how to do it? Would it be like riding that bike or not? But anatomy is pretty amazing. When you approach it from a medical student standpoint, you have to really spend a lot of time. And that kind of came naturally to me in med school. That was a benefit. The anatomy was, in some ways, a breeze from my carving background.
Katie Burke: I can see that, actually. No, I could, because I was actually always good at A&P, but I had a teacher in high school. I took from a private teacher, because we didn't really have a good art program at my school. So I went to her, and I was like a horse kid. I was one of those girls. So I wanted to draw horses all the time and she would not let me paint like she had all these steps I was like and I wanted to paint it. I didn't want to do it in pencil. I didn't want to do it in pastel I wanted to do it in oil and I wanted to do the whole body and she like made me I had to do all these leaps to do it. So I had to do the whole skeleton. I had to do the skull I had to do all these individual parts before she would let me just go. And, um, yeah, and that's all anatomy, like learning the visual part of the anatomy is huge.
Josh Brewer: I don't, I don't want to get out of direction in your podcast, but, um, I had this great group of guys. I went to med school in West Virginia and, um, our anatomy class was kind of like the big, um, net that kind of caught you and you either made it or you didn't. It was a turning point for a lot of people in school. And, um, I landed in this group with these guys. There were four of us, I believe, and there were five. And we had really different backgrounds. But I mean, several of them grew up deer hunting, skinning deer, you know, shooting birds. We were kind of the rough and ready batch. And it was really helpful. Like when I think about the way a hunter appreciates game and whether they know they're learning anatomy or not, that's just such a huge lesson in life. Yeah. And It's definitely got a translate if you do anything in the natural world art I think knowing your subject is so important so the decorative help the medicine background helped coming back to it now I guess it's part of part of who I am is to try and make a. try and make a good representation and I do try to put the brakes on all of that and allow myself to exaggerate or accentuate things about a bird because photorealism isn't what we all remember about a bird in the marsh. You remember them being fast or streamlined or big or small or, you know, these things that are way harder to encapsulate than just by their own simple details. It's, you know, there's something about the spirit of the bird that has to come through. So trying to balance that trueness to life, but also what the bird or whatever your subject matter is, what it impressed on you when you saw it in the outdoors.
Katie Burke: Yeah, I like that. All right. We're going to go to a break and then we'll come right back.
Katie Burke: All right. Hey everybody, we're back and chatting with Josh Brewer. Anyway, let's get back to it. Let's just jump right back in. So we're kind of talking about, I guess my question when you were talking about med school and how it's helping you and the anatomy side of things. Do you think, and I guess this also goes into the decorative stuff, but I'm guessing that attention to detail continues on through your, what is still there, probably even more so there now, because I'm sure as a medical doctor, you have to be attention to detail.
Josh Brewer: Yeah. I mean, Definitely those things have to come through and it's it's pretty rigorous training for that I think it just kind of took me off guard that it I kind of perceived when I started looking at my Looking at my own work again that it had helped in some ways that I didn't really anticipate And I think that there's a lot of whenever you go through a lot of training for anything I mean it really doesn't matter what but intense training kind of does You have to deal with your own self-criticism. You have to hear it. You have to take lessons from it and you have to get better from it. You can't certainly wallow in it, but it wouldn't do any good to not criticize your own work. So you have to be a strong critic of yourself. So I think those things were probably skills.
Katie Burke: I think we're the worst critics of ourselves, honestly. Right, right. Yeah.
Josh Brewer: Yeah, exactly. Most productive critics, you know, you want to criticize yourself and then bring yourself back up a little bit. And so that was a surprise. That kind of came in and played more of a role than I thought it would. I think my work has changed since I came back from when I left.
Katie Burke: How many years were you practicing medicine?
Josh Brewer: Um, that's a good question. I stopped in, uh, 2011 and, oh, I started, you know, the whole medical journey in 2011 and got back to, uh, carving at the end of 2022.
Katie Burke: So not too long ago. Um, yeah. Yeah. Was there anything when you started back that you knew you wanted to like kind of venture towards? Like, did you have an idea? I, do you have new inspiration? Do you know what you were, what you had in mind was a little, anything different that you were kind of aiming for?
Josh Brewer: I miss the feeling of being in my shop and making something. I mean, that's, that's what I was aiming for. That was just a huge part of me that I'd ignored or, you know, suppressed for, uh, you know, a dozen years or something like that. And I knew how good that felt. I mean, it's kind of like if you feel great as a runner running and you don't run for a long time, you just want to feel like you're running again. And I think for art, it felt kind of similar to that. I didn't know what pieces I wanted to do. I knew in the first year back that I really wanted to do some things that challenged me. I figured it's kind of sink or swim. I didn't want to baby myself. So I did a couple of challenging pieces and a few that were right back to my roots as well.
Katie Burke: You don't seem like somebody who picks the easy options.
Josh Brewer: I pathologically pick hard things to do.
Katie Burke: As your story has been being told, and then you gave a running reference, I was like, oh, he just doesn't pick very easy things.
Josh Brewer: Oh, no, I'm not. I'm not much of a runner.
Katie Burke: But just the reference of it in general, though, I get it. I was like, yeah, I am a runner. But I was like, yeah, like you don't seem like somebody who chooses the easy option.
Josh Brewer: Well, I think, you know, I don't know. Everybody tries to figure out what they want to do in life. I think that having two kids has really changed what I want out of any career. How old are your kids? They're eight and five.
Katie Burke: Yeah, I have a seven and four year old.
Josh Brewer: They're great years. And they're at this sort of pure stage where you're reminded of all the good things you want to do for them. Don't ask me when they're 17 and 14. I want to do something that they can appreciate at least how I did it, whether they want to do it or not.
Katie Burke: Well, and it's like, I get that. I mean, though you're talking to me, you make me want to go like start drawing and painting again. I am a runner. So that's kind of what I do now. And then, but I do know that feeling that you're talking about. I don't know how to describe the feeling, like when you get creating something, even if it turns out good or not, like, it's just a feeling that you have. And I don't know, I think like with my kids, and I'd like to one day, I also have a one year old, so. having stuff around the little ones, as I'm sure you know, it's fun. One day I'll have a space, but I don't have like a space that's mine. But I want them, I think that with running too, like I want them to see that I worked hard at something and I pursued something and it could have gone, if it goes bad or good, I kept going after something that made me happy. Like it doesn't have to be painting or running or whatever it is, like long as they see that grit and that want to do something. And I get that. So was it hard for you to make that choice to leave being a doctor and then going into carving? I can't imagine that being super easy.
Josh Brewer: It was and it wasn't. I mean, the good of it was great. I had this one job where I was a flying doc on Tangier Island out in the middle of the Chesapeake. And so I took care of this community of watermen. And it was great. A lot of people have seen that island. I got to see it rain or shine all seasons of the year and kind of the life they lived. And that was a good memory of why I wanted to do medicine. And it was good to help, but it was also just kind of fun and intriguing and the people were interesting. So in some ways I didn't have to be a It's no good part on mine to have just enjoyed it. I was just fortunate to be in the right place at the right time and do that. And it felt meaningful. So providing a service, whatever it is, making something, doing something, using your mind for something where someone else benefits from it, it does feel good and it does seem worthwhile. I was just at a point where I wasn't spending the time with my family and I was ready to You know when your kids are toddlers you if you're lucky you take a breath and a moment and you decide. What you're gonna do for the next ten years because everyone tells you you're gonna blink and will be gone and i think i was fortunate to have a few people around me who said. No, Josh, those are pretty valid questions and you're going to, whatever you do, you're going to be happy if you spend some time with family. So that made the decision easy in the very end, but the decision to leave something behind that you'd put so much time into was a little bit, a lot of heartburn over that.
Katie Burke: Yeah. Yeah. It's a lot of time, money, money.
Josh Brewer: Yeah. Yeah. I, I left it with medical school debt, which is, uh, you know, that's a, that's a, in a lot of people's minds, a silly idea. And you know, if they, if you decide you're going to go run a fortune 500 company, that that's fine. But if, if you're going to become a decoy carver as your second plan, you do get some raised eyebrows.
Katie Burke: Well, I mean, You could go back one day, too, if you really want. It's not gone.
Josh Brewer: I will say this, I have not looked back a single moment of a single day with any second thoughts on what I did.
Katie Burke: No, I can see that. So were you in… You're in Maine now, right?
Josh Brewer: I'm currently in Maryland. That's where I'm doing the podcast from with it. Yeah at our family home, but I live in Maine full-time.
Katie Burke: Okay, so did you go to Maine as a doctor? Is that how you got to Maine? I did. How have you enjoyed Maine as a decoy carver?
Josh Brewer: I love it. It's really neat. I had a couple of chances to go to Maine when I was a kid and I learned about Gus Wilson who was a great Maine decoy carver and real sculptural forms and you know the landscape is pretty picturesque up there. I went from most of my duck hunts as a kid right through last year. If I was on the eastern shore of Maryland at all, the places I would go, you're worried if you'd have enough water to get your canoe across to the blind. Whereas for the last few seasons in Maine that I've been hunting, I've been sea ducking a lot. Sometimes I'm in 270 feet of water, And you know you've got the mountains at your back and it's beautiful. It's kind of shocking.
Katie Burke: Interesting you mentioned Gus Wilson because you mentioned like wanting to go back in your form and make it more abstract and his stuff is very kind of simplistic in that way. It's kind of got this odd structure to it and very like simple paint. How has that influenced you now being there?
Josh Brewer: You know, I was sitting down trying to have something remotely worthwhile to say to you, and I was thinking about the different people that influence me, and I could rattle off a list of five who are like really big time influencers of what I like, but I think I want something from all of them. I haven't seen, you know, there are perfect decoys, but when it comes to, I say perfect, you know, there are these ones that are just so archetypal you wouldn't ever change them as far as carvers go they all kind of because they were tools as well um the decoy was a tool it was a there was a production mentality just to most of them a few had the the luxury of only ever making their own decoys um and put as much time as they wanted to them but um but for the most part you end up saying well if i had a little bit of of this guy's you know form and a little bit of this guy's paint and But Gus Wilson stands out as this one who is not detailed, who is utterly sculpturesque. But if you step back, I mean, I'm looking at one of his scoters right now. It's in my case. If you step back and look at that bird on the water, it's so realistic. It's so, it works. So, finding the right form for where you are and what you're trying to do is, is pretty important. I have to look at those groups of people. While I was thinking about the different ones that influenced me and if I had anything that was worth saying, I would say that I like decoys that were made in isolation.
Katie Burke: Okay. Elaborate.
Josh Brewer: I think they have a lot of character. So if you take Cob Island, on the Atlantic coast. If you go down to South Carolina and you look at Georgetown, South Carolina, and whether it's Keynes Brothers or who made those decoys, who entirely influenced them, I don't know, but the snakey neck mallards that we attribute as Keynes Brothers. If you take Gus Wilson's, if you go a little bit on up the coast to Nova Scotia and you look at Orrin Hiltz, who is a famous merganser carver, All these people were in relative isolation. I mean, compared to today, they certainly were. And I think they got to be the complete expression of what they saw, what they wanted to see. And as opposed to like all of us do, myself included. I mean, I've just said it in this podcast. I like to take a little bit of this and a little bit of, you know, that person's influence. I do think we water down our original intentions. So these, these decoys made in isolation, those are the ones that people remember. They, they develop their own forms.
Katie Burke: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think of Ansari in Louisiana. He's got a weird looking decoy. Louisiana has quite a few of them actually, because they were all on those little,
Josh Brewer: It's a perfect example. La France and yeah, they were their own look.
Katie Burke: Yeah, then they're all weirdly folky and different. I don't know. Louisiana is an interesting place. So I think, yes, they were interpreting the duck in the way they saw it. But I think, let me see if I can put words to it. I still think they're being influenced. I don't think their influence is completely pure.
Josh Brewer: Oh, sure. Yeah, I mean, isolation is like a variation on on, you know, degrees. I mean, none of them were made in a bubble. Yeah. But if they had time to make them in their own waters with their own vision, and I mean, their version of isolation then was probably a lot stronger than ours. Ours would be now. They weren't looking at Google images of everybody else's decoys and trying to decide what they wanted to make. Yeah, I'm with you. You can't push the isolation thing too hard. You'd lose all the schools of carving. You'd lose the flat-bottom, Crisfield sort of school of carving where you go from pre-Ward brothers, like Noah Sterling or Travis Ward, through the Ward brothers, through you might know Oliver Lawson.
Katie Burke: I haven't met him. Well, I talked to him on the phone, but I was supposed to interview him, but he didn't feel good, so we didn't get it done.
Josh Brewer: He's got to be the culmination of where Lem Ward wanted to take his decoys. Yeah. So there's a whole school of generations of carvers that certainly benefited from one another. But if you went back to the first ones that were so folky as pure folk art forms, it's hard to beat maybe a Steve Ward 1918 to 1928 form and Lem's paint with that. They were pure. Fairly. Fairly, yeah.
Katie Burke: Yeah, I mean you're right and then and it's a few people who have like taken that and combined it into something their own like now I mean and y'all are doing it there's definitely I still think you've made it your own I mean it's hard to say like like Marty Hanson stuff he's really definitely has a signature so does Cameron and But it's a combo, but there's definitely signatures to things. I interviewed Pete and he has a name for it. I guess he called it his signature. Pete Peterson? Yeah. He's like, you can't help but it come out. It just happens. Of course, he says it in two words. He's the hardest person to interview ever because he just… doesn't want to give me a full answer, but… His birds say it all.
Josh Brewer: He's not a big talker, but I mean, you can see a Pete Peterson 100 yards away and know it's his.
Katie Burke: Yes. If you pay enough attention and you pick up enough of somebody's birds that you can do that. Yeah. And I think that's the one thing you're talking about, like looking up birds on the internet and things like that, and then copying that way. And I think you mentioned this in your other interview, but you can do that, but nothing's going to take away the benefit of actually holding them. You're never going to get that education as you would from holding a decoy.
Josh Brewer: Yeah. I've always loved low tech. My parents were so long suffering with my arc of starting carving, but I built an aviary when I was 14, so I kept wild ducks. Well, they weren't wild, but they were technically migratory waterfowl. I had redheads and bluebills and a pair of ruddy ducks and black ducks and mallards. I had a lot of different species. It wasn't just like I had one species. It was fun to watch them and watch them rear young in the aviary and all. That was always one of the biggest things about duck hunting. I wanted those birds in my hands to see and to move them around. That's one thing if I go hunting with somebody and maybe it's their first time or hundredth time hunting. I don't have a dog, so I am the… Well, I now finally have a retriever, but I'm doing as much retrieving as it is. So when I go bring a bird back, if somebody doesn't look at the bird for a while, I'm awfully disappointed. You got to spend time looking at it. I love that part of it.
Katie Burke: Yeah. I mean, I agree with that. But I think some people are just naturally that way and some people aren't. Not everybody kind of thinks that way. So you're doing mostly sea duck hunting now? Is that what you're doing? Do you get to do puddle duck hunting up there at all?
Josh Brewer: I do. I do. I'd love to be back on the shore in the fall. I love to shoot wood ducks. And we've got some nice cypress swamps around here that have really good, fun wood duck shooting. I love to bird hunt. One of my favorite things is woodcock hunting.
Katie Burke: Yeah, so you've recently switched over to doing game birds. Did you do game birds before, or are you now just doing them now?
Josh Brewer: Yeah, no, I did them before. I traded a pair of decoys for an English pointer when I was 21, and that kind of started my love of Woodcock are wild birds where I was from that you can still legitimately hunt. You can hunt quail on a farm. I saw some wild quail and knew where to find a few, but in two seasons, that would be over if you really wanted to hunt them hard. So we just kind of let them be. And I tried to be a grouse hunter. I'm a pretty poor grouse hunter because the mountains west of the mid-Atlantic are really still, that's tough hunting. for grouse. You can do it down through Tennessee, but that's a real prize if you get a grouse. And I shot a few in West Virginia. Now that I'm up in Maine, there's actually real legit grouse hunting. So grouse and woodcock are up there in pretty good numbers, and so that's kind of where I've turned my sights for next season. I'll probably spend as much time doing that, but I've got my eyes on building a boat so that I can take my boys out in something safe and comfortable for the duck hunts.
Katie Burke: Yeah, Cooper took me woodcock hunting and that was an experience.
Josh Brewer: He and I are trying to connect on a woodcock hunt. We tried to do it this year, but we both had really busy decoy schedules and we just couldn't figure it out. Next year. We're telling ourselves next year.
Katie Burke: Okay, so I have a question because it goes back to examining the bird like after you shot it. So did you do dead mounts prior or did you start doing dead mounts now?
Josh Brewer: No, I think I did my first dead mount maybe around 20, so they go back for me maybe 20, 22 years, something like that.
Katie Burke: I feel like they've really gained in popularity amongst like the collectives and stuff the last few years.
Josh Brewer: Everybody always tells me, oh, don't do a dead dead mount. Nobody will ever want that. But I've never had one for more than a show. Yeah. So I don't know. Maybe that's I haven't done that many. I've done it. Uh, maybe not a dozen, uh, close to a dozen. I don't know. Yeah.
Katie Burke: I feel like they go quick. Yeah. Cause I mean, I feel like all the Cameron's are ordered.
Josh Brewer: Yeah. Yeah. He's, he's great at him.
Katie Burke: He does a good job. But I feel like they've brought back in their popularity. The dead and that people like the dead mounts all of a sudden.
Josh Brewer: They're an interesting still life. I mean, people in what the probably go back to 1700s were painting them. Alexander Pope was the big one who really made the carvings popular, but So there's a good antique precedent for them, but there's also… They are interesting. I think you just can't think too much about them. They're just beautiful.
Katie Burke: Yeah, I think so too. You know what? It probably is, and this is super practical and people are going to push back on this, but you only have so much shelf space. And, you know, maybe you don't want a painting there. Maybe you want something with some 3D, like dimension to it. And so, and you can hang it on your wall. Versus, I mean, maybe it's as simple as that. They're beautiful and you don't have to have shelf space for it. Because let's be honest, these collectors don't have much shelf space left.
Josh Brewer: I run into that all the time. So, you know, somebody eventually when they really want something, Clear one off, I guess. I don't know.
Katie Burke: Before we go, I want to talk a little bit about, like, you as a collector, because not only do you have, you carve, but you also collect things. You mentioned your Gus Wilson back there. So, when did you start? I'm guessing, my guess would be, besides the first rig of decoys, came across collecting as, did you trade for collecting or did you buy them? I did, yeah. Okay, that's what I assumed. So, what were you after, like, and how has that changed as a collector?
Josh Brewer: Well, you know, people, collectors kind of, they say to one another, what do you collect? And you sort of have to identify your interests, I guess. It always gets asked anyway. And I have pretty hard ones to identify. I guess I kind of loosely collect black ducks and I like things with joinery in them, things that inspire me as a carver. Everybody says form. To me, form is like, I spend my day with form. It's a pretty broad term, but the forms that interest me, I like hollow vessels, I like fine lines. In general, I tend to get attracted to birds that are expensive, so I have a small collection. I don't have the birds that I would just love to own. Yeah, I have a weird smattering. I love Maritime Canada. I love Maine. I like the eastern shore of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina. I really like shorebirds. I think they're cool. They go through little fits of they're either really in or they're really out, but if I like them, I like them.
Katie Burke: Yeah, I assumed you were going to say like in more of a what helps you as a carver. I had a feeling that was going to be what you collected, like what inspires you.
Josh Brewer: That's kind of the thing. Half my collection sits down on my workbench. So I mean, I don't treat them probably a whole lot better than they were treated when they were in the water. I don't know. I mean, granted, I don't put them back in the water. I've put one or two back in the water. But yeah, for the most part, I'm sitting studying them. I pick them up, carry them around the house, look at them. I guess that's probably different than a lot of people approach collecting. But if you carve, I think that's what anybody would do.
Katie Burke: Beth Dombkowski Yeah. I think, well, you're going to have a different perspective than somebody who just collects for the aesthetic and the history of it. So did you put any of those back in the water and they disappoint you?
Josh Brewer: You know, at the risk of sounding like a real jerk, I will say I've always loved Elmer Kroll's paint. I love his work. He's like, you know, sometimes it's kind of like you're maybe your parents. You may love them the most and you may criticize them the most as a kid. Well, as influences, I I do have a real fondness for a lot of Kroll work, but I see a lot of them that leave me pretty cold. And I'd say, oh, that wouldn't be a good decoy. And I feel that way about some Joe Lincolns. But so many times, I mean, they weren't sitting there making that to wow you. I mean, they were making a working decoy with the wood that they had, with the width wood that they had, which is a huge thing in decoys. You know, you get influenced by what your local materials are. And that's an enormous determinant. So, you know, I try not to put that as too much of a judgment on them. They were not making these things for museums and they were using what they had.
Katie Burke: Well, yeah, and they're people, so you can't expect them to have perfect production every time. Not every decoy is going to be a masterpiece.
Josh Brewer: Right, but even some of the masterpieces leave me a little bit cold. And that's one thing that kind of surprised me as I got to the point where I had the nerve to go pick up a four or five hundred thousand dollar decoy and look it over. Yeah. I'll tell you one that that goes the exact opposite direction, one that I thought would leave me cold and really just sang the moment I picked it up. Chang Wheeler's Black Ducks.
Katie Burke: OK.
Josh Brewer: Yeah. I thought that they were a little too tight, a little too honestly, a little too boring from pictures. Yeah. But the moment I started picking them up at shows and looking at them in auctions, I was like, these are pretty amazing. Yeah. The under build details that he do. It wasn't just technical. It was just the guy cared enough to put exactly what his vision was into him. I feel the same way about the best Gus Wilsons. They sing when you get them in your hands.
Katie Burke: Oh, yeah. Oh, they're also like little aliens, too. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. That's why, like, you can find them across a room. Right. So, yeah, those eiders, yeah, they do. They look like aliens to me. Yeah. I love them. Okay, so before we go, because I've had you about an hour now, so is there anything we didn't talk about you want to talk about? Did we mention anything? Did we skip anything?
Josh Brewer: I don't think so. Actually, we did skip one thing and that was, I'd be remiss if I didn't throw in a little plug for the upcoming show in Chicago.
Katie Burke: That's what I was gonna say, we did skip that. So you are selected as Carver for the show? What is the title, official title?
Josh Brewer: featured carver, which I'm really honored. It is also just a designation. It allows me a chance to throw together a retrospective kind of bigger display than I would normally be able to put together.
Katie Burke: Do you have to do any carving slash painting while you were there?
Josh Brewer: I've thought about it. I'll be doing one or the other. I'll carve or paint because I'm a whole lot better with my hands busy. So that'll be good. And that's a great week. So the first, I believe it starts on a Tuesday for the buy, sell, swap. So Tuesday through Friday morning really early is all devoted to buy, sell, swap and auction, which is a lot of fun for me because I like the camaraderie and all that.
Katie Burke: Have you been? Did you go? Uh-huh.
Josh Brewer: I have. Last year was my first year though. And you know when i started doing this again full time i was like what are the shows gonna be because if you ask anyone about decoy shows if you're not careful the the. tagline is usually that some of them are really suffering. It was an art form that sort of hit its heyday maybe through the 90s, early 2000s, and then we're all wondering where to go next. And, you know, they don't all just run forever on their own without reintroducing, you know, a different facet or whatever. They all take maintenance. So I was wondering where my shows would be, but I was just thrilled with Chicago. I guess I should call it Lombard, the North American Decoy Collectors Association. They're a big show out in the, it's at the West End in Chicago, or in Lombard, Illinois.
Katie Burke: So good time. Last year was like the first year I hadn't gone in like six years. So I missed you. So are you going to have like anything in a room or are you just going to enjoy the buy, sell, swap and then set up in the main area?
Josh Brewer: No, I'll do my, I'll do my sales through, I'll have a room there. And so I'll do sales through that and sales through the show. So I'll be set up at both.
Katie Burke: I'll be there on, I get there Wednesday through Saturday. Sure.
Josh Brewer: Well, you have to stop by.
Katie Burke: Yeah, I will. It's a lot of fun. I may make you get on camera, so. Oh, gosh. They just brought back the featured carver. Was it last year was the first time, or? I think so. It happened a lot. They used to have it all the time, and then they didn't have it, and then it's back, correct?
Josh Brewer: Right. That's my understanding. I mean, I'm not a good historian on this. No, me neither. When they told me some of the ones who there were, I mean, it's a daunting list. So it's a good company, but they had, I think Schmedlin was the first featured carver out there. Love his work. I mean, he was quite unique. He might not have been isolated, but he was readily identifiable. And Cameron McIntyre, Mark McNair. Marty Hanson. Marty Hanson's done it. Marty Hanson had one. I don't think anybody's ever going to put together a bigger display than that. That was fantastic.
Katie Burke: He's also close by.
Josh Brewer: Probably helps. That was really epic. Really good display.
Katie Burke: Okay, so when you go in, starting on Saturday, or does it start Friday? Friday. Starting Friday, you can go into the main room, the ballroom, so to speak, and the whole thing's set up with tables and everything. Are you, as soon as you walk in, or do they put you towards the back, off to the side?
Josh Brewer: I was sort of, I was sort of back when you walk through the front doors, if you look straight back against the back wall, that's where I was last year, but I don't know if it'll be the same this year. They're trying to figure it out. I think it's going to be maybe four to six tables, so a little bit bigger and I think they're still working on their design.
Katie Burke: And so it'll be like you and then probably next to you is whatever the collector display is. There's usually like a collector display at the same time. I don't know what the collector display is this year. Do you know?
Josh Brewer: Uh, I saw it. I know Adam Grimm's also going to be a featured artist there this year, I think. I did not know. And I forgot, I think there's a shooting boxes. I know that it's on their website. They have, and they have a little article or a little ad in decoy magazine.
Katie Burke: It's gunning box display. And there's the other one. I think there was a regional decoy. Yeah, I can't pronounce this. Reynolds, Benz, and Pointeven? I don't know how to say that. Oh, okay. How do you say that? I hadn't looked at it yet. That's the only thing I see. Okay. Okay, cool. So, I'm glad you're doing that. I'm glad they're bringing it back. I'm glad, I think, you know, we give a lot of the history a lot of attention, but we need to give contemporary carvers, you know, that's one thing we've talked about on here a lot because I've had a lot of the call people on and call making gets so much attention. They do a really good job with NWTF and all these things that kind of really promote call makers and we need to make sure we're doing the same thing for decoy carvers.
Josh Brewer: Well, and I mean, one other thing that I'd say is I think we talked a lot about historic influences, what I liked, what people collect. But I will say I always try to be aware of the fact that the people whose decoys we collect, they were revolutionary in their time. They were doing something different. So it'd be a mistake to only look backwards. You got to somehow take what inspired you from the past, but I think that's kind of what I meant about the isolation comment is to make sure that there's some pure vision for where you want to go. It can be anchored a little bit in the past, but you can't be too tethered to it and make something new.
Katie Burke: I have a question about that. So when you have that vision, right, that you're trying to kind of bring through all of your decoys, like that main vision. Do you think, not only, I understand why that would be beneficial, like, to keeping things, you know, I don't know, like, on the same trajectory, I guess, but could it, would it also have its, I guess, negative aspects in that you're, could you get too focused on that vision and not allow yourself to be creative? Like, what do you think about, what are your thoughts on that?
Josh Brewer: Yeah, you gotta let them happen. I think that comes down to personality. I mean, some people exude tight control over their work. Robert Bateman is a great artist, has pretty tight control over his work, I think. And some people are really loose. Yeah. And that is their sort of vision and the way they do things. So and collectors are attracted to one or the other or both on their own merit. So I try not to think too, too much about it. I try to go even if there's a lot of pressure to do something or deadlines or timing or whatever, somehow you've got to find enough headspace to just say, I've got to have fun while I'm doing it. And that usually results in something that even if a collector or the buyer didn't know how to ask for it, if you can have fun doing it and be yourself, you usually get. Most people are happy with it.
Katie Burke: Yeah, I would think so. I think that's saying like, try, I think thinking about it too much would almost be near. Yeah. Yeah, it would be.
Josh Brewer: And everybody has their different version of that laser focus. I mean, for me, it probably doesn't look like laser focus to to to an engineer or whatever.
Katie Burke: Well, I don't think any sort of laser focus in the creative world looks that way to an entertainer. Right. Right. Yeah. It's just different. Yeah. Not bad. Just different. All right. Well, thank you so much for doing this. This is really fun. I could keep talking to you. I have so many questions.
Josh Brewer: Oh, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. I appreciate the opportunity.
Katie Burke: And I'll come visit in Chicago. Are you bringing your family with you to Chicago? Is it just you?
Josh Brewer: They don't know if they're going to go yet. You know, it's a little bit hard to run the buy, sell, swap and all of the traffic and kids and my wife. So if I can get my wife out there and we can leave the kids here, that's probably the best first option for Chicago.
Katie Burke: Probably. Yeah, I would agree with that. I'm there for work, so I don't have my family. Well, it's great to talk to you. Thank you for coming.
Josh Brewer: All right. Thanks so much.
Katie Burke: All right, thank you, Josh, for coming on the show. Thanks to Chris Isaac, our producer, and thanks to you, our listener, for supporting wetlands and waterfowl conservation.