For the past 23 years, carvers from across the globe have traveled to small coastal town of Reedsport over Father’s Day weekend for the Oregon Divisional Chainsaw Carving Championships.
During the event, carvers are given a roughly four-foot-by-eight-foot log of Sitka Spruce, a massive, fast-growing tree native to Oregon. The competition starts Thursday morning, and carvers have until Sunday afternoon to complete their creation.
“It’s the largest event on the west coast,” said George Kenny, the event’s emcee and auctioneer. “A lot of carvers’ careers are created here. We have large logs here … and so they come out here to try to throw their hat in the ring and meet some of the best carvers in the world.”
But the event doesn’t just draw carvers. It draws an eager crowd of spectators.
“Just the act of taking a chainsaw and cutting something out in front of a crowd, we become performance artists,” said long-timer carver Steve Backus. “That’s the show. We’re the rock band.
“Plus, it’s a chainsaw. It’s a tool that can turn bone and flesh into a fine red mist in a matter of seconds, so there’s always that ‘car wreck at the race track’ type aspect that goes with it.”
Wood carving, of course, is an ancient art, but chainsaws are a relatively new artistic tool. Chainsaw carving traces its roots to the midcentury era, when loggers, looking to amuse themselves, began using chainsaws to create crude chairs or designs from stumps and logs.
“The saws were big and bulky and heavy, and the work they did was kind of chunky and odd,” said Bob King, founder of the Reedsport event. “It’s evolved since then. The work these guys and gals do, you can put this in your front room. It’s turning into fine art.”
Since the 1960s, as chainsaws themselves have become lighter and smaller, chainsaw art has become more refined. Today, carvers use specialty carving bars with smaller, dime-sized tips, along with a variety of drills, sanders, grinders and gouges in their creations.
Bob and Cindy King founded the Reedsport event in 2000. Bob King grew up in Reedsport, but he was living near Puyallup, Washington, when he first discovered a love of chainsaw art. He was enamored with the chainsaw-carved bears a vendor was selling at a local fair. Instead of buying one, he decided to make his own.
“It’s the only God-given gift I think I have,” he said. “I can’t paint. I can’t draw. No education in art, but I can carve just about anything.”
When Bob King was laid off from his job at Boeing in 1998, he started carving full time. Cindy King runs the online side of the business, Bear Necessities Sculpture Supplies, where the couple sells the specialty tools used in chainsaw carving.
Among this year’s 39 competitors on the Oregon coast, nautical themes were popular — sea captains, seahorses, krakens and divers — along with a handful of sasquatches. In the world of competitive chainsaw sculpting, you’ll see all kinds of fantastical beasts.
“What makes a successful artist is 50% self-discipline and 50% total, chaotic creativity,” said carver Anthony Robinson from Hoquiam, Washington, who created an undersea scene of a diver battling a squid.
But when it comes to making sales, one creature is ubiquitous: Bears.
“Every carver can make one,” Backus said. “And they’ve been very, very good to us. If you want to buy gasoline and pay the rent, you better make a few bears.”
In between working on their main pieces, carvers participated in daily quick carve challenges, where they are given 90 minutes to create one or two pieces from a smaller log. Those are auctioned off daily, with part of the proceeds going to fund the event.
Main event sculptures strive for novelty. But to win the quick carve competition, your piece needs to sell for the most money. Commercial appeal eclipses artistic endeavor.
“It has to tell a story,” Kenny said of a successful quick carve creation. “It has to be something that people can relate to. Cute sells.”
Thus, visitors to the Oregon Divisional Chainsaw Carving Championships will have their pick from dozens and dozens of bears.
Bears on benches. Bears hiding under logs. Bears sitting in logs and riding tricycles. Buyers can choose cartoon bears or fierce bears or smiling bears holding roses.
“Bears outdo everything,” Kenny said. “People have a love affair with bears.”
Quick carve sculptures sell for anywhere from $50 to $900, while the main event sculptures (which carvers can choose to sell and keep all proceeds) range in price from $1,500 to $5,000.
The top place finishers in pro and semi-pro divisions take home cash prizes at the end of the competition, with the first place claiming $2,000.
First place in the semi-pro division went to Tristin Lemmons for his giant T-Rex. In the pro division, Jacob Lucas took the top prize for an airbrushed piece of a skeletal hand holding a red rose.
“It’s a real American folk art,” Backus said. “It’s one of the few art forms that Americans exported to the world. It’s amazing what some of these guys with no structured art background can produce.”
