by Dr. Iain
Corness
The kitchen in the Montien Hotel in Pattaya has some
very interesting people. One of those is a young Thai man, Anun Rodpai
(nickname Khow), a man who has represented Thailand on the world stage
with his fruit and vegetable carving skills, and just recently added
another gold medal to his total in a Bangkok competition. Just what drives
someone to carve cantaloupes, a medium that turns to mush after a few
days, and all that work becomes fruit fly fodder? I sat down and spent an
interesting hour with our local champion to get this interview.
Anun is a local, born in Chonburi, the eldest of twin
boys, with six sisters below him. His father was a sailor and his mother a
housewife, staying home to look after her large brood of children. For
her, fruit and vegetables were food for the family, not items of art.
But it was ‘art’ that caught the imagination of the
young Anun, this being his favourite subject at school. One teacher
fostered this interest, and after school and at weekends, Anun worked as a
soap carver in a Chonburi department store. Interestingly, his twin
brother neither liked school nor art, dropping out early to join the
manual labour workforce.
After leaving school at age 16, Anun had ambitions to
be a movie star like many young Thais, but while waiting to be discovered,
he went to the Hotel and Tourism Institute in Chonburi where he began
training in general kitchen duties, and did his practical work at the
Phuket Yacht Club for six months. “I picked Phuket because it is
beautiful.” When he finished at the Institute in Chonburi, he joined the
Montien kitchen in Pattaya. “On my first day I started carving, and it
has been my main work since that time,” he said proudly. He has also
taught himself how to carve, his teacher at school who introduced him to
the subject having been his only mentor in his craft.
His first competition was in 1994, after two years at
the Montien and he came 3rd, much higher than he initially expected.
However, these days he expects to win, and has numerous certificates and
medals to prove it. It has even been reported that other hotels have told
their staff not to enter a competition if Anun is going to be there - he
is too hard to beat!
His skill in this area really is legendary, and Anun
was chosen above all others in Thailand to demonstrate fruit and vegetable
carving at a Tourism Authority of Thailand promotion in East Africa in
1997.
It was also in those early competitions that he could
see that by having a different concept compared to everyone else he would
make his entry stand out. “I like free style competitions, they are
sabai, sabai” because this allows him to express his own ideas and
concepts. “The ideas come from my brain. I like to change my ideas and
have a different style from everyone else. I even carved young Durian for
one competition, because no one else had ever done this.”
And how long does it take a professional fruit and
vegetable carver to change a watermelon into a work of art? “It used to
take me 30 minutes, but now I can do it in 3 minutes.” However, an
exhibition or competition piece takes around half a day per item, and the
latest prize winning entry in Bangkok took eight days, with the individual
pieces being wrapped in plastic after their carving and then sealed in
airtight bags and kept under refrigeration.
I asked Anun if he was saddened or even frustrated by
the fact that his masterpieces have such a short life. Surely it would be
better to carve wood or jade or even ivory? “I can do wood carving, but
there is no range of colours as there is with fruit and vegetables,” he
said with an artistic flourish. “Cantaloupe is my favourite. The texture
is very good, but taro is also good because it lasts a long time.”
His tools of trade are as individual as the man
himself, as he makes his own carving knives. “The ones you can buy in
the shops are not sharp enough and the steel is too thick.” I examined
his knives and the steel used is very similar to that used in surgical
scalpels - and just as sharp. They may only be carving fruit and
vegetables, but these precision instruments need sharpening every week and
the useful life of the knives in his hands is only six weeks.
There is no getting away from the fact that ‘art’
has been the driving force in his life, right from his early days at
school. His hobbies are all ‘art’ in some fashion - he paints, does
needle-point and makes banana leaf designs as seen in the Loy Krathong
ceremony. “I like anything artistic,” he said simply.
So where does our champion carver go from here? In his
‘wish list’ is a desire to go to Japan and try his hand at some ice
carving competitions. He would also like to go to London and perhaps show
off his craft in a Thai restaurant over there, but after that he would
like to come back to Thailand and open a school for Thai carving right
here. However, it would not be first through the door with a carving knife
in his or her hand, his students would have to satisfy his strict
criteria. “You need to love carving. You need to be an artist. You have
to have art in your heart.” You will have to be like Anun himself - a
man with art in his heart.
So many artists only have their work recognized after they die. With
Anun it is different - his work is being recognized in his lifetime - but
it is his art pieces that die. Is there someone out there who can stop
cantaloupes from slow disintegration?
