What began as a simple retirement hobby for a Clarks Summit resident making a few sculptures has grown into hundreds of pieces of artwork.
For the past 40 years, Eugene Moyer has been creating wooden sculptures of people and animals of different sizes. The 76-year-old retired accountant estimates he has made more than 1,000 sculptures out of wood.
Moyer’s most recent display featuring 26 out of 57 sculptures representing different states is on display at the Abington Community Library. Moyer made the carvings in 2000 after visiting 46 of the 50 states. He has since visited every state but Hawaii.
It typically takes him 15 to 20 hours to sculpt a piece, with smaller ones taking him an hour to finish. The longest time he has spent on a sculpture was 35 hours carving a Baryonyx dinosaur; the sculpture weighs 50 pounds.
While he initially chopped down the wood for his art pieces, Moyer now draws what he will sculpt on precut wood and cuts the shape out with a jigsaw, which he said takes less time. He then glues the pieces, and uses a hammer and chisel to carve out the details of the sculpture. A Dremel tool adds texture.
While he uses different varieties of wood — including white and yellow pine, red cedar, mahogany, maple, poplar and vermillion — he prefers using black walnut to carve his sculptures because of its natural color. Moyer purchased most of the black walnut from a friend, Charlie Guenst, who lived in Treverton.
“This turned out to be the wood I love the most because I think it’s the most beautiful in the world,” he said. “It’s very hard and dense, which means I can work very, very fine detail into it.”
Over the years, he has mounted exhibits of his carvings themed around coal, the Ice Age, oceans, dinosaurs, famous people and political cartoons at various libraries and museums. The number of pieces he’s shown has ranged from 40 to 100.
Eugene Moyer points to details on one of his wooden sculptures displayed at the Abington Community Library in Clarks Summit, Pa., on Wednesday, June 17, 2026. (ISAAC DIAZ/STAFF PHOTO)
Eugene Moyer displays some of his wooden dinosaur sculptures ahead of an exhibit opening July 16 at the Abington Community Library in Clarks Summit, Pa., on Wednesday, June 17, 2026. (ISAAC DIAZ/STAFF PHOTO)
Clarks Summit resident Eugene Moyer stands beside to his wood sculpture exhibition at the Abington Community Library in Clarks Summit, Pa., on Wednesday, June 17, 2026. (ISAAC DIAZ/STAFF PHOTO)
Artist Eugene Moyer stands behind his wooden sculptures on display at the Abington Community Library in Clarks Summit, Pa., on Wednesday, June 17, 2026. (ISAAC DIAZ/STAFF PHOTO)
Artist Eugene Moyer stands behind his wooden sculptures on display at the Abington Community Library in Clarks Summit, Pa., on Wednesday, June 17, 2026. (ISAAC DIAZ/STAFF PHOTO)
A detail of a wooden sculpture by Eugene Moyer is displayed at the Abington Community Library in Clarks Summit, Pa., on Wednesday, June 17, 2026. (ISAAC DIAZ/STAFF PHOTO)
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Eugene Moyer points to details on one of his wooden sculptures displayed at the Abington Community Library in Clarks Summit, Pa., on Wednesday, June 17, 2026. (ISAAC DIAZ/STAFF PHOTO)
Each carving on display now one features different features of each state, such as a wolverine representing Michigan, the Wolverine State; gray wolves for Minnesota; a Swiss cheese for Wisconsin; a tornado for Kansas; the Wall Street bull and pieces of the World Trade Center to represent New York; a farm for Pennsylvania, and a crab for Maryland.
“I tried to capture what I call the constitutive essence of each state, something by which the state can be readily identified,” Moyer said.
Michael Richardson, adult services coordinator at the Abington Community Library, selected the pieces that are on display. He said he picked ones he felt would resonate best with patrons.
Richardson said the sculptures have been a hit with the public. Moyer has enjoyed watching visitors look at them.
“Almost every patron that comes in is walking through it,” Richardson said. “We see kids looking at it and they’re learning stuff. They’re talking with their parents about the different states, learning something too. So it’s just, I love that it’s like interactive and that they can learn something about each state, which is perfect for the 250th (anniversary).”
Richardson learned about the sculptures when Moyer visited the library in the fall and told him about his dinosaur pieces. Richardson thought they would be great to display in line with the Lackawanna County Library System’s SummerQuest reading challenge, themed “Unearth a Story.” With the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the sculptures depicting the states would work well at the library, he said.
“We thought that this was a different art form that hadn’t been really highlighted at the library,” Richardson said.
All the sculptures were initially displayed in 2007 at the Anthracite Heritage Museum in Scranton. Moyer will have dinosaur sculptures on display at the library later this month.
Moyer has written five books about his sculptures, each of which was for an exhibit — including one about the 50-state sculptures.
The state sculptures are in a bas-relief style, in which the designs are only slightly raised above the background surface — producing a three-dimensional appearance on a 2D plane.
“It’s almost like drawing on wood,” Moyer said.
Moyer likes the sense of accomplishment and achievement he gets from sculpting. Having carved wooden sculptures for so long, he said they have become a part of his identity.
“I made a living professionally as an accountant, but nobody thinks of me as an accountant, they think of me as the wood carver,” Moyer said.