They see, they conquer
Craftsmen use chainsaws to make art on TV’s Carver Kings
The growl of the chainsaw, the swish of sawdust, the thud of wood hitting the ground.
For woodcarvers like Ryan Cook, who make art with a tool once used in a certain Texas massacre, the craftsmanship far outweighs the danger.
“I’ve had incidences with the die grinder, the sander, where I’ve got my finger caught or I forget it’s on and I drop it on my knuckles — it’s painful,” says the Vancouver-area native.
“But there’s nothing like the adrenalin rush of knowing that you have to carve a monster piece and it’s the first big cut.
“I always do a little prayer right before. I’m just like, ‘Please carver gods, you gotta have my back on this one!’”
Cook is one of the professional chainsaw carvers featured on HGTV’s series Carver Kings, a Williams Lake, B.C.-based spinoff of the network’s Timber Kings.
Each episode follows the carvers as they complete jobs for high-paying clients across North America in a tight five-day deadline.
The projects are both intricate and striking: Among them, an eagle with its wings spread midflight and the trunk of a tree hewn with a flower, leaves and a butterfly.
It’s a long way from the first thing Cook carved — a mushroom that wasn’t so much magical as dysmorphic.
“It was tragic,” he says. “I had no idea how to run a saw. It looked like a round-topped piece of wood, and needless to say it perished. But it was practice.
“When you start, you’ve got to learn the saw. You’ve got to learn how wood reacts. My first mushroom didn’t work. But I rock them out now.”
Originally an actor, Cook took up with the carving crowd after being cast on OLN’s Saw Dogs, despite not knowing much about the craft.
There, he apprenticed under 18 world-class carvers and fell in love with the process of turning raw wood into works of wonder.
When Saw Dogs was cancelled after one season, Cook found himself at a crossroads.
“I asked myself, do I want to go back into my regular job or do I want to be a carver?
“That was four years ago. I stuck with it, and I’ve carved every single day. You’ve got to start at the bottom and work your way up. It’s just determination, hard work and studying.”
Chainsaw carving as an art form is believed to have started in the 1950s, when Ray Murphy etched his name into wood using his dad’s chainsaw. In 1961, Ken Kaiser notably created 50 carvings for the Trees of Mystery attraction south of the Oregon border.
A couple of decades later, carvers such as Art Moe and Barre Pinske had come to the fore.
“I always say that carving is like skateboarding in the ’80s right now,” Cook muses. “It’s going to take off in the next 20 years.”
As a bona fide pro, Cook has competed in Canada, Amsterdam, England and France. His home is packed with favourite projects, including a welcome bear, a bench, wall pieces and a carving based on the video game Zelda.