FAIRHOPE, Ala. — “Carving is in my blood,” said Dudley Martens with a laugh while laboring on a handcarved fish bowl for the Fairhope Arts and Crafts Festival in his modest, but efficient workshop.

Although he never received any formal training, Martens has been carving wood all his life.

“Being raised on a farm in South Dakota, I had to have something to do,” he said with another chuckle. “When I first started to go to school, we moved to a farm, the nearest neighbors lived 4 miles away! If we wanted, needed or broke something, we had to grow it, raise it, make it or repair it, so my skill was learned out of necessity,” he added.

In addition to his work with wood, Martens began painting portraits and landscapes in high school. At age 16, he showed his first exhibit at the Civic Art Center in Sioux Falls.

He said love of art helped him land a part-time job at a silk screening company, and eventually led him to flexographic printing.

In 1980, Martens’ printing took him to Pensacola, Fla. “I was co-owner of a printing company for 27 years. During that time, my artwork was limited to graphic design for advertising materials, bumper stickers and labels. But for my birthday in 2000, my then girlfriend, now wife, Joan, gave me a set of chisels and a piece of cedar. From that piece of cedar I carved a bowl in the shape of a fish for her, and on the back of it, I burned, ‘Thank you for re-igniting the passion,’” he said. “Before that bowl, I hadn’t carved since 1982.”

After Hurricane Ivan in 2004, Martens cringed when he saw truckload after truckload of beautiful hardwoods being taken away to be burned.

“Ivan changed tens of thousands of peoples’ lives. In my case, the hurricane convinced me to sell my share of the printing company and focus on using that incredible natural wood to build and carve beautiful, functional art pieces,” he said.

Everything the Daphen resident carves or builds is out of reclaimed wood, mostly trees that have fallen during storms especially hurricanes and tornadoes that would otherwise be burned, or left to rot in a landfill. He also scavenges tree trimming sites for curved oak limbs for use as rockers.

“Many people don’t realize that these trees grow too slowly to be replaced in our lifetimes, some are well beyond a hundred years old. Hardwoods are being replaced with faster growing softwoods,” he said. “If we aren’t careful, we will be left with only man-made materials. It is such a shame to harvest trees for lumber and throw away the valuable resources we get after a storm comes through,” he added.

“I don’t believe in waste, everything gets used in my shop,” he said pointing to one of his cutting boards. “This is made from a few days worth of my carving scraps.”

He’s not kidding; everything from the floors in his workshop to his homemade kiln has been made from recycled materials.

“The floor was made from the tree that used to be in this spot before I built the workshop, and even the ashes from the kiln go to our compost bin” he said.

Martens will be launching a Web store next month (www.woodsalvagerstore.com) and does about six local art shows a year to sell his work. This is his second year to exhibit at the Fairhope Arts & Crafts fest.

“The Fairhope Festival definitely has a different feel to it. Everyone is so friendly, and it is so well run,” he said. “I love meeting the people and am thrilled to be a part of it again this year.”