In the fall of 1975, Michael Resman quit his job to become a full time woodcarver. He started teaching woodcarving classes and decided that a club was needed to increase knowledge of and interest in carving. On January 10, 1976, at 2:00 pm., the meeting was called to order by Resman. Over 60 people attended this first organizational meeting.
This was the start of the Rochester Woodcarvers 50 years ago.

This page is about our 2026 Annual Show celebrating our 50^th Anniversary.

As part of our 50^th anniversary celebration, we included a number of big and small enhancements to our regular annual show.

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Photo Links _{^{(Click on any highlighted title to open each photo album)}}

2026 People’s Choice Carvings – Thanks to photographer Nick Poleschuk and assistant Mike Reilly for photos of our People’s Choice carvings. All show visitors can vote for their favorite carvings in our People’s Choice competition. Photos of the top three carvings (shown above) will be used in promotional materials for the next year’s show.

2026 Raffle Carvings – Our club finances the show completely from our raffle. Club members provide some of their creations for raffle items. Big thanks to photographer Nick Poleschuk and assistant Mike Reilly for this set of photos!

Candid Photos from the 2026 Show – Nick Poleschuk also played a wandering photographer and managed to capture the feel of being there.

MORE Candid Photos from the 2026 Show – Wayne Hendrickson volunteers to be our club’s “paparazzi” photographer and is always on the lookout to photograph our club members exhibiting at the show and the visitors at the show. His photos provide a great collection of memories of prior shows and documents all the great things happening at the show! Thanks for all your work Wayne!

Video walk through the 2026 show – Club member Russell Scott has done it again! Armed with his camera, he has captured the look and feel of our Annual Show. This 51 minute YouTube video visits most every corner of the show. Have a peek to see what so many people saw. (PDF page of time stamps for all of the tables.)

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Media Coverage _{^{(The links will take you to separate pages run by each media..)}}

KAAL News Segment #1 – A month before the annual show, KAAL television had a short (3+ minute) segment on their 4:30 pm news show. Greta, Brent and Andre each brought some of their carvings to the discussion. The TV station said they will have more coverage as we near the show date.

KTTC-TV Midwest Access – On the Monday before the show, KTTC’s Midwest access had a pleasant 5 minute segment on the Rochester Woodcarvers Club Annual Show. The team of Brent, Andre and Greta presented a lovely collection of carvings and turnings. Greta did a fine job of representing the Zumbro Valley Woodturners who we invite to show off their craftsmanship at our shows.

KAAL-TV Segment #2 – They invited us back on the Tuesday before the show to do a nice segment proceeding our show. Andre (who was our lead bull dog on arranging our television appearances), Brent and Greta came back to gave a little bit of a carving lesson.

KTTC-TV News Report – KTTC came to the show on Sunday and captured Ben talking about the club. Their news shows ran this concise 1 minute clip (after the show had ended).

On February 24, the Post Bulletin published a lovely article about the club that extended over two pages of the Life Section. This story focused on one of our two weekly carve-in groups,

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To view past shows, go Here.