Devon Garcia
Out of the Cedar: The Life in My Hands
The Key in the Drawer
still remember the weight of that old screwdriver in my palm. It wasn’t a tool to anyone else—just something rolling around the bottom of a drawer—but in that quiet Kingston house, it was my first key. My mother kept us on the move to stay ahead of trouble, and while she did what she could to provide, she didn’t see a future in my drawings or the way I’d get lost watching birds. To her, art wasn’t a path; it was just a way to pass the time. But when the world outside felt too loud, I would retreat into the silence of my own hands and the curiosity of my own mind.
I started with paper and pencils, but eventually, the flat surface wasn’t enough. I found a discarded mop-stick—nothing but a bleached, splintered piece of wood—and I took that screwdriver and a ratchet knife to it. I didn’t have a plan. I just started digging. I carved faces, patterns, and little animals into the grain. I remember being so shy about it, tucking the stick away when people came around. But they saw it. They’d stop and run their fingers over the ridges I’d made and ask, “Who made this? I’d buy something like this.”
That was the first time I realized that the things living in my head had a place in the real world. Even if the support wasn’t at home, the wood didn’t lie to me.
The Spirit of the Cedar
I have always felt like cedar wood. If you look at a piece of Jamaican cedar, it’s reserved. It doesn’t scream for your attention like some of the more polished, imported woods. But it has this deep, resonant potential; it’s sturdy, it’s local, and it carries a scent that reminds you exactly where you are. I never went to a fancy school to learn how to speak to the wood. I taught myself. I looked at the works of Michelangelo and the old masters in books, and I saw how they made stone look like flesh. I thought, I can do that with what we have right here.
By 1978, I knew this wasn’t just a hobby anymore. I went out and bought my first real set of sculpting tools for $150. That was a lot of money back then—a serious investment in a dream nobody else quite understood. I still have the box and the original receipt to this day. They serve as a reminder of the moment I decided to bet on myself, long before the world knew my name.
For a long time, I was still hiding. I’d go to galleries like the one at Devon House and just stand there, looking at the “real” art, clutching my own small carvings behind my back. One day, a man named Mr. Gaye saw me. He didn’t just see a boy standing there; he saw what I was trying to hide. He made me show him the piece. I was trembling, but he didn’t laugh. He bought it right there on the spot, placed it in his shop, and it sold immediately.
That moment, along with the encouragement of a Pastor named Mr. Reynolds and the late Mrs. Lois Lake-Sherwood, changed the soil I was growing in. When people like that tell you that you can make a living from the visions you see in your sleep, the doubt of the past starts to fade.
Faces in the Market, Figures in the Wood
My process isn’t something I can turn on and off like a pipe. It’s more like a tide. When I’m in the flow, I start when the sun first touches the yard and I don’t stop until my body physically forces me to sleep. I don’t always know what the wood wants to be when I pick it up. Sometimes, the idea comes to me in a dream, a vivid image of a face or a muscle tensed in motion, and I wake up with my fingers itching to find the chisel.
I take my camera to the markets now. I don’t look for the postcard version of Jamaica. I look for the woman leaning over her baskets of thyme, the man resting his weary shoulders against a stall—the candid, unvarnished truth of us. I take those photos home and I study the lines in their faces. My work has a “3D” soul; I don’t just want to scratch the surface. I want the figure to look like it is stepping out of the cedar, like it’s breaking free from the tree to come and talk to you.
Finding the Rhythm of Success
There have been hard times, of course. There are days when the money is thin and the doubt of others is thick. But I don’t let that heavy energy in. When someone expresses doubt about what I can do, it just becomes the whetstone I use to sharpen my tools. I’ve learned that if you love the work first—truly love it—the rest of the pieces of the puzzle have a way of finding their place. Passion is what carries you through the lean years.
Through Things Jamaican, my work has found homes I’ll never visit. It sits on mantels in London, in bedrooms in New York, and on desks in Toronto. When someone in the Diaspora holds one of my carvings, I want them to feel a shock of recognition. I want them to feel the heat of the Kingston sun and the calm of a place like Hope Gardens. I want them to look at a piece of wood they might have stepped over in the street and realize that there is beauty in the things we overlook.
To me, success isn’t about fame. It’s about the quiet moment when I finish a piece and realize I’ve captured a breath. It’s about having enough capital to keep producing at a high level. If I can keep pulling stories out of the wood, then I am doing exactly what I was put here to do.
I’m still that boy who found a screwdriver and saw a world inside a mop-stick. I’m just working on a bigger piece of wood now.
