Pete Levijoki’s one-of-a-kind art made with drywall compound

One-of-a-kind drywall sculpture artist Pete Levijoki points to some of his unique, 3D foliage artwork on a ceiling in his Toad Lake home.

By Matthew Johnson

Reporter

Northwest of Wolf Lake along the southwest shoreline of Toad Lake in rural Detroit Lakes lives an artist who creates a unique type of wall sculpture art using drywall compound.  ¶  Peter “Pete” Levijoki, originally from Ironwood, MI, was born the seventh of seven children. When he was 18 he went to Oregon for a few years, drove a truck in Portland and met his wife, Linda. He had no idea at that point that he would become a one-of-a-kind wall sculpture artist over the past few decades.  ¶  The couple moved to Canada near Linda’s home church and Levijoki found work doing sheetrock taping and texturing. The 24-year-old was working on a house with a long, skinny wall. He went outside to retrieve some supplies from his vehicle and noticed a farmer’s field of barley. Then, his eyes suddenly shifted as they were drawn to some strands of winter wheat growing up beside an outdoor step.

This “Provisions of God” wall sculpture art piece recently created by Pete Levijoki on Toad Lake northwest of Wolf Lake is prominently displayed at Wolf Lake’s new cafe, Shepherd’s Table, that Cody Lake recently opened. The artwork depicts a “bread and wine” motif with a rock in the middle, wheat on the right and grapes on the left. Levijoki says the rock represents Christ, the wheat represents bread and the grapes represent wine.

He began carving a three-dimensional picture of the winter wheat scene on that long, skinny wall using his taping and texturing tools and some wet drywall compound.

The owners loved it.

And so his first custom, wall sculpture art, “Winter Wheat,” was born.

“It all got started doing that,” he said. “That’s the first one (wall sculpture) I did.”

Levijoki said he had never come across 3D wall sculpture art before.

“I didn’t know it existed,” he recalls.

Pete Levijoki usually sketches out a drawing to use as a guide before creating his unique brand of wall sculpture art using a drywall compound. Here he’s at his dining room table in his Toad Lake home revisiting a sketch of a nature scene in one of the three-ring binders he keeps the sketches in. 

That’s because he, by God’s grace, created it that very day as Levijoki’s signature brand of wall sculpture art was born. He reflects back on that birth/creation and wonders if he caught even just a tiny glimpse, on a much smaller scale, of what it must be like for God to create.

“I learned a lot from doing that first one,” he said.

He moved back to Ironwood with Linda and worked in sheetrock, but as interest rates were rising, work dried up and they moved back up to Canada to find work there. He began working on large, stamped ceilings and the walls surrounding spiral staircases. The walls became giant canvases upon which Levijoki created his art with 3D depictions of trees, wild animals and “all kinds of things.”

Much of the interior walls of Pete and Linda Levijoki’s Toad Lake home mimic foliage that can be viewed outside their windows along the southwest shoreline of the lake. Pete says he has literally used his God-given talent for creating a unique brand of drywall sculpture art to spruce up the place.

An article was published on his work in an international magazine. A lady from Blackwood, Va., contacted him after her husband saw the article in a barber shop. They were building a house that resembled a ship with a centrally located staircase.

“They had a lot of blue herons there,” and Levijoki depicted several of them “flying up through the staircase.”

He did a series of sculptures in various Canadian hotels and each one of them had a particular theme to them. Some of them were Western themes that included depictions of cowboys, one included a grizzly bear and his largest project ever was a dinosaur-themed scene inside a former Ramada hotel in Alberta, Canada. The four walls of the main lobby that display his work are 30 feet high and 16 feet wide depicting dinosaurs inspired by a nearby dinosaur museum.

“I went through the whole thing (dinosaur museum) before working on the hotel walls,” said Levijoki. “It’s incredible!”

The project took him between a week and a half and two weeks, he recalls.

Many of his works begin with him doing sketches of the subjects or using old pictures. He uses them as guides. Levijoki uses the sheetrock compound to make the wet material he calls “mud” and, once applied to a wall, he has a window of time to create before it hardens. The fastest setting mud gives him about 20 minutes to work while other mixes provide him with a larger window of 45 minutes or even 90 minutes.

“It’s all done while it’s wet,” he said. “The finishing part takes the longest because it’s got all the details.”

He is also a painter but notes that drawing with mud is easier.

“If you make a mistake (with mud) you can just wipe it off,” said Levijoki.

The Levijoki’s moved to this area from Canada a number of years ago to be closer to family. All those who have seen the ornate wall sculpture of a dove in the Spruce Grove Apostolic Lutheran Church south of Wolf Lake have seen his work. One of his latest works can now be seen in Wolf Lake. That’s the “Provisions of God” wall sculpture now prominently displayed on a wall at Shepherd’s Table, Cody Lake’s recently opened cafe in Wolf Lake.

The artwork depicts a “bread and wine” motif, has a rock in the middle with wheat on one side of the rock and a grapevine with grapes on the other side. Levijoki says the rock represents Christ, the wheat represents bread and the grapevine with the grapes represents wine.

“It’s a very spiritual picture, and Cody is a very spiritual person,” Levijoki said.

Levijoki has also remodeled the interior of their lakeside home with his wall sculpture art displayed over much of the wall space on both levels. The basement has a large wall sculpture of an egret, which is “like a blue heron only white,” that took him about 12 hours to complete. He also made a  horse-themed wall sculpture on the wall of a downstairs bedroom he created for granddaughters when they come to stay. The couple has three grown children and eight granddaughters.

The view from Levijoki’s lakeside home regularly includes inspirational nature scenes with wildlife of all kinds including bears, otters, loons and ducks of all kinds, including wood ducks. The walls of the home mimic much of the pristine foliage around them.