HURRICANE - Some are the size of a pill, others are barely an inch tall, but that does not stop Rev. Herman Hayes from intricately detailing his three-dimensional wooden sculptures.

Hayes, of Hurricane, points out photographs and articles displaying his carving talents over the years. They are stacked in his garage waiting to replenish him with memories. Some are photos of the 100 men he carved out of 100 toothpicks, each with their legs split, or the 23 years he spent selling his art at the Mountain State Art & Craft Fair at Cedar Lakes.

"I had kids come up to me to look at the carvings and they would stay all day," Hayes said. "That was a compliment to me."

Hayes, 85, began carving about 40 years ago. He likes carving miniature people and gets ideas for his peoples' faces from pictures.

"The accomplishment of just taking a piece of rotten wood and making something valuable out of it tickles me," Hayes said. "It takes a certain talent."

And while Hayes enjoyed peddling his wares at county fairs, he has been recognized and celebrated as one of the "greats" in the art world. In 1979, he won the highest prize awarded in the West Virginia Juried Exhibition, the Governor's Award of $3,000, for his piece "Ballgame." It was a wood carving of 150 people, no taller than an inch each. Hayes said he likes grouping people together in his pieces because they sell better.

Out of all of his pieces to date, Hayes' favorite is an untitled stadium with 93 miniature, integrated people sitting in the audience. Each face is completely unique from the others. Inside the stadium is an octagon shape that is fitted with four stages that are interchangeable: an orchestra, a boxing match, a baseball game, and a church.

Each stage is detailed with more miniature figures including props, such as 20 horns for orchestra members and boxing gloves and a ring for the boxing match. On the bottom, Hayes listed the types of wood used in the carving, such as mahogany, teak, buckeye, cedar, walnut, oak, and sumac. Hayes said he sold a piece just like it to former Gov. Gaston Caperton for $2,600.

Signs of Hayes' art are all over his house - bags of wooden sculptures ready to be sold, new pieces in progress, and even his toolbox tells of his passion for carving, as his knife handles are carvings of people. Around his home are carvings out of Styrofoam, the rubber inside of golf balls, and recently completed pieces. While Hayes can be obsessive with his carving, his nerves tell him when to stop.

"I mean you can do too much of anything and when I overtax my body, at 85, my body doesn't take what it used to take. I know I've done too much," Hayes said.

Hayes relaxes by reminiscing about his earlier years when he was a Charleston Golden Gloves champion in the late '30s or by looking at NASA's Hubble Space Telescope images in calendars and books.

"The more you know about what God made the more you know about God," Hayes said.

That appreciation of God is nothing new for Hayes. For 30 years he was a Methodist pastor. He said when he was called he tried everything to get out of it, but God would not let him.

"I tried drinking, but it didn't work, and the more I tried the more He called. I had a lot of temptations along the line, all those years, to do something else," Hayes said. "But you don't doubt what God wants you to do - you better do it."

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