>>> welcome to "common ground". i'm your host ashley hall. "common ground" captures the creative process of various artists living throughout our region. each week we delve into the veiled history of our area, and take you to the cultural events
that take the north in north country. on this week's episode we visit northern lights casino in walker to see how chainsaws and a little elbow grease create amazing works of art at the competitive chainsaw sculpting championships northern lights
regional competition. >> we have called chainsaw sculpture a performance art. we have called it art. >> i have been doing it about 14 years, and picked up the chainsaw by chance because i'm a city girl. wow.
sort of a bit scary, and dangerous, and it's fast, and it allows you to do a lot of work really quickly. very satisfying. >> i just have a natural love for wood and carving. i have been working with wood since high school, i guess,
cabinet shop, and worked into the carving, and now it's a full-time seven day a week job. >> 10 years ago, i bought a chainsaw, and a tree went down in my backyard, and i went after it. i made a mushroom. >> people that like it like
watching something creative happen in front of them. in general, they are attracted to wood sculpture and like the excitement surrounding so many works of art, the finishing touches in a short period of time. we are at the chainsaw sculpting
championship northern lights regional competition, and i'm this event organizer oregoner ad producer, along with my partner, and northern lights casino, and i'm doing everything i can to make this a wonderful environment for the art to happen.
the masterpiece carving is a timed competition, and each starts with at this competition, a log as large as we can find, and carving pieces of white pine, that took 14 1/2 hours to take the design and realize it in their piece of wood, limited for that log.
it's a judged competition, so the sculpt yourself sculptures4 and a half hours are judged by the panel of qualified judges, and we declare a champion, and the champion moves forward to the world championship in september. at the competition here we have
one of our former champions, and his name is steve higgins, and he's an extremely fast and talented carver from new mexico, and he's working on a piece over here with an owl, and a bear and a fish and a horse. fast, accurate with the saw, and a great compositional, and the
gentleman on the corner here who did maybe a standing moose, and he's known for taking this, and disassembling his log, and piecing it back together seamlessly in an unusual shape, and it's called working outside of the log, and he's the best at it that i'm aware of, and the
moose is standing on all four legs, and you cannot see the log that he started with, and one other carver i pointed to being a carver interested in angela, a carver from australia, she's a funky whiefunky wild personalita unique vision for chainsawers, nontraditional.
doesn't go for wildlife, and she's doing one called a cheezy chick, a vo lumpious qom. lumpious woman. >> when i'm carving in a venue like this, you are focusing on the end of the saw, and you are moving what you don't want as quickly as possible, and
usually, you know, i'm not a terribly religious person, but i'm fairly spiritual, and it's scary, and there's not a loot of second chances. once it's gone, it's gone. it's a very dangerous tool, and you have to be on the ball and aware of that all the time.
when you are using the same saw, it depends. you might have four hours or 400 hours to complete your work. you would approach every event. it's a little bit different, and you have to accommodate whatever those differences are. it's half of the challenge.
first and foremost, it was very immediate. i have been for five years by myself in isolation, and hacking around, and thinking i'm the only one in the whole universe doing it, and in 2002 i found the international carving community on the internet.
i traveled over to the states, and this is my ninth year to do the carving events. there's hundreds of events in this country, and all through europe and england and japan and everywhere. it's amazing. it totally changed my life.
i love it. >>> i grew up in minnesota, and when i started traveling, there's a very strong internet community, and it's like an extended family. i travel on my own, but i'm never really on my own, and i have 500 big brothers looking
out for me, and that's a really encouraging thing, and we all share and battle, and it's incredibly supportive environment. i'm a very lucky girl. i really am. and i have had really hard work, and performing monkeys, and
situations like this, and this one is incredibly professional, and none of us are carving in the sun, and the wood is clean, and it's been really, really well thought out. i'm really impressed. well done minnesota. you know, it's special, and
instead of trees going into the landfill, we are creating it in something special. it's got to be good. it's got to be good for the universe, don't you think? >> more and more women than ever before. it's a powerful art form, and
also being designed, and chainsaw carving isn't about brute strength, it's about stamina, skill and talent and the sheer desire to want to do not everybody wants to look like this every day. we started a team called the chainsaw chics, and it's a
vehicle for us to promote ourselves effectively, and we figure we have more power, and we are more interested in knowing we are very much individual carvers, and lucky to get together once a year, but it does, it helps us to promote ourselves, and it's fun to carve
with other people. one of the reasons i travel, at times i travel light. 8 months of the year i'm traveling in solitude. >> our fans come from all walks of life, and they are interested in seeing something unique and creative happen.
and not surprisingly enough, more than a few of them become chainsaw art collectors, and we saw all of these at auction on sunday, and once you have one of them, you see how many people are interested in it 234 your own yard or living space, and you just -- they are kind of fun
to collect and have around. >> and they are encouraged to arrive with a clear idea of what they want to make. most will say that it helps them sketch out, and it helps them see the carving in the log if they have sketches of it. there are guys here who have
carved these exact pieces and just in preparation for an event like this, and it's not unusual for a carver to do the same carving, one, two or three times, and as the space increases, i'm sure it will become more and more common. there's a definite strategy
here, you have to bring your image in this large log across the fu finish line, and so you e to maximize your time usage to get to accomplish your strategy and your sculpture, and that is in itself is fairly unique to the art form. it's a great thing to do with
your creative ability. it's a lot of fun. the competitions are mini competitions within the competitions, and the quick carves are an hour and a half in length, and subject matter is open, and in the masterpiece, there's a theme of northern
wildlife, and the quick carve is one sid side of a carver that produce the piece or the pieces that go the most at auction, and that day wins a cash prize and a medal. it's fun to watch because they are an hour and a half in length, and they can kick out a
lot of wood in that time. >> at each of our competitions we invite carvers with less experience to take part, and it exposes them to the pressure of carving in front of a live audience, and sometimes we discover people talented enough that eventually move to the next
level. others this is a unique thrill for them. like to have carvers, and basically participate at other >> i have done it off and on a couple years now as a hobby. my mom bought a carving from somebody, and she kind of
started carving and liked the way it looked, and she got me into it. i went in with an idea what i was going to carve, and wasn't sure. if you make the wrong cut, you need to move around it and do the best you can.
it's a lot of work. it looks like it's easy because of the way they do it, but it's really not. ia believe they are doing this in the amount of time they are doing it. today was a lot of fun, and i got to see a lot of really nice
pieces and learn a lot from them, too. >> i have been chainsaw carving for about 12 years, and prior to that i did chisel carving and smaller pieces and was invited to do the quick cut competition, and what brought me into carving with the chainsaw, i saw other
guys carving at a gas station years and years ago, and i watched them for an hour or so, and i thought that looks like a lot of fun. i bought a chainsaw, and the rest is history. >> when i first look at a piece of wood, i walk around it three
oar four times, and see if i can visualize a piece, and then i pick off the big pieces and work my way down to a smaller size. that's generally how i do it. sometimes if i don't have any particular plan, i will go with the wood or if there's a knot or a branch or something like that,
i will use that or incorporate that into the piece. >> it's a little bit foggy where it started, but there's a carver who claims to be the first, the original chainsaw carver that was in the late '40s. actually he was overseas in fiji working with the military, and
he had access to chainsaw ask some free time, and made the world's first chainsaw carving since then evolved to the point of the early competitions and they are real former, and seesaw, the organization that i'm a part of, competitive chainsaw sculpting association
worldwide. we have a worldwide competition, we have a competition in germany, and a competition in japan, about 8 competitions in the state to form tournaments, of which this is one of them. they competed in a world championship.
there's several types of competitions, and ours is where we allow ruined hardware in there so people can take pieces of the log and reassemble it. that's its own tradition, and that came out of the auctions basically financially supporting the events and we have things
with more of a finish, more color, and that will be exciting quite often that excel with the use of color, and on the other end of the spectrum, in our tournament, one our japanese competition is a cane saw only competition where you get a log, and you have chainsaws, and
that's all the tools you can use, and there's a pure form of this art form, and the tradition in and of itself, and it's a wonderful one. not surprisingly they produce clean work with just a chainsaw. >> i started chainsaw carving in japan.
japan have many competitions, and many people come all over to japan, and i made a bunch of carving friends, and now i started going all over the u.s.a., and i have a bunch of people, and a bunch of carving friends, and so i love burning, and big torch, and that is -- it
looks so natural, and my husband came to the competition, the japan competition, and we met and get married, and now i couldn't carve for a couple years, because i get pregnant, and now my son is two years ago, and this is very, very exciting for me, too.
i grew up in a big city in japan, and i moved to little country site, and so the land -- i have to carve in them, but i have no idea about the chainsaw, so i go google it and found out that chainsaw carving, what's that? and i wanted to try it myself,
and i feel so good after my first piece, second piece, third piece, and i decided after the third piece, i'm going to be a chainsaw carver. i love carving small animals, doggies, and cat, and squirrels, and the deer. many carve on japanese drywall
and many things, and i make only one. i learn tips from the carving book, and i love to make detail with the chainsaw. i usually make the small doggies, and cats, and make their face cutie. so then i feel so good, and i
can carve well. >> the vast part of the process is discovery. i will cut a piece, and then i will torch it, and as time brushing off the soot and everything, all the wonderful shapes and things appear that i didn't expect sometimes.
i discover new things i can do or new ways of cutting that create different textures of things. the strangest thing i figured out is i'm making art for other people. that's what i'm doing. that's how i approach every
piece, and i'm always going into it realizing that i need to take great care in the communication, like when i'm trying to communicate with a piece so everybody else will understand what i'm trying to portray. i try to get it down to a more intuitive thing, where it's like
a dialogue with the log. i make a cut, and i see that cut, and i make another cut, and it's a continuous reactor, and as the piece starts to come out, i start to react to whatever is there. i usually bring the drawing, and articulate the drawing with
measurements, and the problem is, when you are carving a cylinder, it's really hard to maintain something that is square, you know, like a block of wood, and it would work well for measuring and all of that stuff, but a round cylinder, it doesn't work as well, so you
really need to let go and kind of find the forms as you are cutting. >> my favorite part of the competition, it's just getting together with other carvers in a small space and watching these pieces come to life, as i'm bringing a piece, you know, to
life, and all of this creative energy is in there, and everybody is doing their thing. there's a great camaraderie among chainsaw carvers, and that's my favorite part of the competition, and i kind of ride off of that for the competition, and my favorite part of just
carving is being able to just take -- say somebody has an idea of something they like, and it could be me. but it could be anybody. being able to come up with something that fits that and then making that -- bringing that into reality, and it's like
taking, you know, an abstract idea, and bringing that into reality, and you know, that's the oddest thing about what i do is because i sell something that doesn't exist to people. they take it on face that by the end of it they are going to have something they like.
it's a very strange process, but i like that. it's very, you know -- it is creation, you know. >> if you are interested in doing some chainsaw sculpture, i would caution you from picking up the saw in your garage and going off and trying it, because
to carve with a chainsaw is extremely dangerous thing to do without a little bit of education. >> maybe one option is find a carver nearby, and pick his brain for a little information and watch him work. >> of course i would invite
everyone to come out to our competition, and watch how it's done, because even the chainsaws are check specialized for doing the fine detail cutting, and if you try that with a saw with a regular chainsaw bar on it, it's an incredibly hazardous thing to do.
so do not try this without getting a little bit of with a little bit of education, it's an incredibly intoxicating creative thing to do. i encourage everybody to try it with a little bit of information and the right tools and station equipment.
the chainsaw stuff, you can see the impact of the saws in the wood and makes it alive in a different way, and while wood carving is certainly not a new art form, chainsaw sculpture and with the vast tool bristow a piece of wood is unique. so check it out.
if you like it, hopefully we will have an event near you. >> when i attend these events, i think we always, all of us, and i speak quite clearly for all the carvers, we all walk away a better carver, a better artist. we learn so much just by watching the masters at work and
how they utilize a saw to achieve a certain look and the different techniques, and also we walk away inspired beyond belief. you can't put a price on that. you go home with ideas foaming out of your ears. it's fabulous.
>> it's true what we do. we encourage people to speak, and reach higher in life and try new things, and we have all gotten into the possibility to be brave enough to have a guide. that's what this is about. >>> thank you so much for tuning in, we hope you enjoyed the
show. please jonas next week as we feature suzi rae ross of bemidji did i, and tammy tkalcich and marsha wolff. >> if you have a segment idea for "common ground" pertaining to north minnesota contact us at legacy@lptv.org or call us at
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