The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
A SIGHT TO BEHOLD
Clinton artist uses chainsaw to create bear out of wood
CROMWELL » Bear sightings are becoming more common in Connecticut.
But one bear sighting is generating a mix of wonder and admiration.
The 10-foot-tall bear, standing erect with a salmon in its mouth, is a unique ursine — it’s made out of wood. And not just any wood. The bear was “sculpted” from the remnants of an 80-foot-tall red oak tree by a self-taught artist who uses a chainsaw to create wooden beauty.
The artist is Kris Connors, a La Crosse, Wisconsin, native who now makes his home in Clinton.
Connors works in different mediums, including ceramic, epoxy resin and bronze, “but primarily in wood,” he said.
When Danny and Wendy Ouellette realized the 80-foot red oak that had graced their front yard for years had to come down, they decided to do something special to liven up the exterior of their home.
Danny Ouellette, who is a crew leader for the town highway department, went online looking for someone who could transform a trunk into something unique.
In short order, Ouellette found Connors’ website,
"It’s like a puzzle is how I approach it. It kind of unfolds. I don’t really see it until I’ve made a few cuts.” — Kris Connors of Clinton explaining the process of creating his sculptures from logs using a chainsaw.
customwoodcarvings.com, and contacted Connors.
“It was a blessing in disguise,” Ouellette said. “We’re cutting down a tree and getting a bear in the process!”
When he first saw the 10-foot-tall trunk and spoke to the Ouellettes, “I had a vision of a really ferocious bear,” Connors said.
But the Ouellettes proposed an alternative.
“Danny likes to fish — both he and his wife like to fish,” Connors said.
And so, instead of an enraged bear, the Ouellettes asked for a more gentle bear with a wooden salmon in its mouth. Connors quickly agreed. The carving also includes a woodchuck browsing in the dirt in the shadow of the erect bear.
Connors came to custom wood carving in a somewhat roundabout way.
He had gone to Viterbo University, a private Roman Catholic school in his hometown of LaCrosse, to study art.
“I really had an interest in sculpture,” Connors said recently as he took a break from creating the bear.
But Connors didn’t get a chance to pursue that interest immediately.
What Viterbo did give him was a good grounding in the basics of art — line, shape, form and perspective.
And then fate — or, more correctly, faith — intervened.
“I had a connection in college with Jesus Christ that changed my life,” Connors said. He joined a Christian community in upstate New York.
Thirteen years ago, Connors and his wife followed an offshoot of that community when it resettled in Westbrook.
“I really felt God calling us,” Connors said.
It was also when he moved to Westbrook that Connors began thinking about turning to sculpture and to wood carving in particular.
“I saw a guy doing it at a fair and I said, ‘That looks like fun,’” Connors said.
Connors went out and bought a chainsaw and set to work learning the intricacies of making art out of downed trees.
“It’s been a self-taught process,” the soft-spoken Connors said.
“But there’s a chainsaw community online, and I drew a lot of support from them,” he said.
He has had a virtually unlimited ability to hone his craft.
“You can get logs pretty much anywhere: you just go into the woods and find a log,” he said.
He also asks tree-removal companies for logs.
When he approaches a stump, Connors said, he has trained himself so he can see them in three dimensions.
“Two-D is just shape and form; with 3D, all you’re really doing is adding depth,” he said.
As he begins envisioning a sculpture, he begins blocking the form out on paper.
But when he actually puts saw to wood, it is only after he has made “the first four or five cuts” that he begins to “see” the sculpture.
“It’s like a puzzle is how I approach it,” Connors said.
“It kind of unfolds. I don’t really see it until I’ve made a few cuts,” he said.
When he finished the sculpture, Connors treated the bear with a wood preservative to battle the elements, which include “sunlight, water and mildew.”
With a wife (who does basketry and other traditional crafts) and five children to provide for, Connors has developed two businesses.
One involves creating three-dimensional wooden signs, while the other includes his custom sculpture and “public art,” like the bear that stands in front of the Ouellettes’ house.
“I sculpt in all kinds of material. Wood just happens to be the one that is most popular,” Connors said.
Connors has created pieces for customers “all over the world.”
“I have a sculpture that I shipped to Lebanon” in the Mideast, Connors said.
“What could be better than a sculpture in your front yard?” Danny Ouellette asked.
“And it came out perfect. Kris did an amazing job,” Ouellette said.
“This is way above our expectations!” Wendy Ouellette said.
“They’ve been great customers!” Connors said, supplying him with a regular diet of sports drinks, pizza and fish.
“If I could, I’d cut down every tree on the property” and let Connors turn them into sculptures, Danny Ouellette said.
For now, though, “We just enjoy seeing everyone smile as they go by,” he said.