The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
CARVING ARTIST
Chainsaw carving artist Shari Staiduhar focuses intently on creating a 2-foot tall wooden bear on July 28 at the 2021 Lake County Fair. Staiduhar, who owns Rocky Mountain Carving Creations, is a featured performer at the fair.
Shari Staiduhar added a new highlight this week to her long career as a chainsaw carving artist.
She did that by making her first appearance as a featured performer at the Lake County Fair.
Staiduhar, who owns Rocky Mountain Carving Creations, is showing off her chainsaw-carving expertise from noon until 10 p.m. daily on the fair’s main midway.
The 2021 edition of the fair began on July 27 and runs through Aug. 1. All festivities take place on the fairgrounds at 1301 Mentor Ave. in Painesville Township.
The buzzing of Staiduhar’s chainsaw will become a familiar sound this week on the main midway of the fairgrounds, where she has set up a work station and an adjacent booth where she is selling a variety of her finished wooden creations.
Staiduhar, a Thompson Township resident, said on July 28 that she’s gotten a “very nice” response from fairgoers who have stopped by her exhibit. She is accepting orders for custom carvings, and will work on fulfilling these orders during the fair, using wood that she brought to the event.
For example, she carved a wooden bear, which stood about 4 feet tall, on the fair’s opening day of July 27.
Then on July 28 she took about 15 minutes to carve a 2-foot-high wooden bear that was waving with his left paw.
“I’m a very quick carver,” she said.
Her knack for working fast but still producing wooden creation that are attractive, detailed and lifelike stems from nearly 24 years of experience as a chainsaw carving artist.
“I’ve made thousands of carvings,” Staiduhar said. “I have never run into a complication while carving that I cannot overcome. I can always figure it out, and make the client happy.”
She said visitors at this year’s fair have expressed the most interest in carvings of wolves and tigers. Over the course of her career as a chainsaw carving artist, Staiduhar said the most frequently requested wooden carvings are those of bears.
But she also receives a lot of orders for carvings of domestic pets.
“I can pretty much give the likeness, or almost duplicate, a person’s dog or cat,” she said.
Staiduhar named her business Rocky Mountain Carving Creations as a tribute to her favorite state — Colorado — where she also began carving wood.
Although Staiduhar took some fine arts classes in junior high school while growing up in Mentor, she is a self-taught chainsaw carving artist who has learned through trial and error and plenty of practice.
While she uses items like a grinder and torch to put some finishing touches on her projects, she estimated that 95 percent of the work involved in her carvings is done with a chainsaw.
For Staiduhar, carving art with a chainsaw is a year-round occupation. She has a pole barn on the grounds of her home where she can perform projects inside during inclement weather.
However, she also goes on-site to create carvings for clients at their homes or other properties. Sometimes those carvings are created on trees that were previously cut and only feature a longer trunk.
“I set up scaffolding all the way around the (remaining trunk of the tree and dance around it,” she said.
While Staiduhar has produced many admirable works of art with her chain saw over nearly two and a half decades, she said from her point of view, no single creation stands out above the rest.
“I’m so proud of a lot of them, it’s hard to pick,” she said.
“I have never run into a complication while carving that I cannot overcome. I can always figure it out, and make the client happy.” —Shari Staiduhar