EUREKA SPRINGS - In this artists community, even loggers can get into the act.
On Friday and Saturday, 14 chain-saw artists from Tennessee to Washington state participated in Carving in the Ozarks, a chain-saw carving festival that has been held annually for nine years in Eureka Springs.
Competitors brought their own logs, which under festival rules could be no more than 5 feet long and 2 feet in diameter. That’s so the resulting sculpture can fit into the back of a pickup.
“These carvers have to realize people have to get this stuff home, so we limit it to 5 feet and 24 inches,” said David Blankenship.
David and Beverly Blankenship started the festival. They own two stores in Eureka Springs called Sleepy’s Cabin Decor. The stores sell log furniture and rustic decor.
In previous years, the festival furnished pine logs, but some participants complained that pine wasn’t their primary medium, said Beverly Blankenship. So participants brought a variety of logs, including cedar and catalpa, within the required dimensions and were reimbursed $60 per log from the festival organizers.
Chain-saw artists worked from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday to create a sculpture from one log. On Saturday, they had another shot with another log, but slightly less time. The competition ended at 3 p.m. Saturday, and all the artwork then was auctioned off. David Blankenship said in total, the festival raised $17,240.
In previous years, the winning sculptures sold for between $1,500 and $1,800, said Beverly Blankenship. The auction amount is split evenly between the winner and the festival organizers, who said they will give some of their proceeds to local charities. Before the recession, which began in late 2007 and ended in mid-2009 sculptures at the auction had sold for as much as $2,800, said David Blankenship.
“Sometimes you can getreally good deal here,” said Beverly Blankenship, “but if somebody else wants it, you might have to pay a lot.”
In addition to auction proceeds, six cash prizes are awarded: $500 for first place, $300 for second place and $200 for third place. Those awards are given to the top three winners Friday and the top three on Saturday, based on the prices the sculptures fetch at auction.
Friday’s first-place winner was Bob King of Edgewood, Wash., while the Saturday first-place prize went to Sam Dunning of Benton, Ky.
On Saturday morning, a chorus of chainsaws hummed as the carvers worked on their sculptures. Most of them had netting around their carving areas so wood chips wouldn’t fly out and hit the approximately 144 spectators, many of whom were covered with a fine layer of sawdust.
King was busy carving a three-crittered totem pole of sorts at the festival. The top head would be a deer, the middle a black bear and the bottom a wolf, he said. On Friday, he created a contest-winning underwater scene featuring two large fish, which sold for $1,875.
King is a star on the chain-saw carving circuit. He was honored in 2010 by the Carvers Walk of Fame in Mulda, Germany, for winning more carving competitions than anyone else in the world.
King didn’t have much time to talk on Saturday, what with the 3 p.m. deadline. According to his website, chainsawking.com, King had used a chain saw to cut firewood for his family since he was a boy. As an adult, he admired local artists’ chainsaw carvings of bears, so a friend gave him a cedar log and encouraged him to carve his own. The log sat by the back door for almost a year before he finally carved a bear out of it. That’s how his hobby started, but before long he would turn pro.
After he was laid off from his job at Boeing in 2000, King took some sculpting classes at a community college and began carving for a living.
“Next come the competitions,” he said on the website. “Boy do these events make you enrich and refine your existing talents! I can’t say enough about them. We are put in front of a nice block of wood, given a theme (nautical, animals, etc.,), given an allotted amount of time and boom, you’re off. Poetic pandemonium I call it.”
Jim Denkins of Cooks, Mich., said he’s a retiredboilermaker welder who has been chain-saw carving for 25 years.
“I just started making mushrooms and simple figurines,” he said. “Things that were pretty crude. I’d give them to people for Christmas presents, and people kept asking for more.”
Beverly Blankenship said she was surprised to see Denkins cutting boards out of his log on Friday. She figured he must not know the rules. But by the end of the day Friday, Denkins had carved a boy sitting on a pier with a fishing pole, fish and dog. How all that came from one log was a topic of conversation for many on Saturday.
Dunning said he has been at Carving in the Ozarks every year it has been held.
“We like it,” he said. “It’s a friendly competition.”
Dunning was busy Saturday morning carving a grizzly bear in a stream. His bear ended up being part of a bar, bench and coffee table that won later in the day, selling for $1,300.
Luke Harris of Alton, Ill., said he was carving for fun, not trying to win. He hadsketched out a sailor with a parrot on his shoulder. The image was emerging from a catalpa log Saturday morning.
“I just come out here to hang out with the boys,” he said.
Harris has a piece on permanent display at the Rowdy Beaver Restaurant & Tavern on U.S. 62 in Eureka Springs.
It’s a carving of a beaver doing a chainsaw carving of a beaver, he said.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 15 on 04/21/2013