Finding the Art in the Wood..............

We recently had the opportunity to be involved in some very fun art.

We had two huge pine trees on a lot where we are renovating a building for a future business.
They were leaning towards some power lines, so the power company wanted to cut a lot of the branches away.
Rather than hacking the trees so that they looked totally ugly by having half the branches gone, we decided to cut them into stumps and see if we could have them carved into statues instead.

Here is the journey!:

Here are the trees marked for cutting:

And here is the worker cutting the tree branches (and eventually the trees) down:

Leaving the stumps, ready for art to happen!:

Here is Chad, our woodcarving artist, starting on the first statue:

A closeup of how he used a CHAINSAW to make beautiful art!:

Hmmmm...any guesses what this will become????:

Yes! It is an eagle on the top:

The eagle will be holding a fish and the lower half will have a little bear peeking out from the stump. Chad had the vision of what would work....

And the Second stump HAD to be this:

A bear!:






Here is the eagle holding the fish, along with the bear peeking out. This only took him a day to do!! (With a chainsaw!) It was amazing to watch him do this!:

Here is a closeup of the side of the fish. Done with a chainsaw!:

Here is the finished bear. He is handsome, no???











The front view of our bear:

And the finished eagle, holding the fish and the little bear peeking out

from the stump below the eagle!:

A closer view of the detail:

We were so impressed by our chainsaw artist's capability to look at two ugly stumps and to carve them out into two pieces of art. Everyone that sees them, stops their car and asks us who did them. The little town we live in loves these, as they are right across the street from a restaurant and on the main street when you first turn into town on the way to the lake.

I will always admire the artist's talent.