Meet Some of the World's Finest Chainsaw Artists

Since the 1960s, carving with a chainsaw has captured the attentionof artists and enthusiasts because of its intriguing combination of excitement, danger, and beauty. Today, due to the increasing number of competitions and performances and a rapidly growing community of talented artists participating in the craft, chainsaw carving has emerged as a highly respected art form that resides in a class by itself.

In Art of Chainsaw Carving, noted chainsaw sculptor Jessie Groeschen
presents an insider's look at the major artists, both past and present, whose unique and pioneering talents, artistic styles, and personalities make this art form so fascinating.

In addition, you'll find an informative step-by-step chapter on how to carve a beautiful Sun, Moon, Bear chair. Demonstratedby the author herself, the project reveals the fascinating process f
using a chainsaw to unlock the raw and natural beauty of wood.

Grace, beauty and humor inspire woodcarver Jessie Groeschen. Jessie infuses soul into wood as she carves imaginative and unusual forms with her chainsaw. She describes her work as "a dance - just me and the log and the chainsaw, right here, right now."

Jessie Groeschen's home is the Pacific Northwest where she works with western red cedar. She describes this wood as "spirited - soft and a pleasure to work". In the redwood forests of Northern California she finds inspiration for her carvings. She calls it "her duty" to take a fallen log, and old stump, or a root end and breathe new life into it - to recycle it into something new.

Jessie Groeschen is the creator of The Cutting Edge newsletter for the Cascade Chainsaw Sculptors Guild. Jessie has written articles for Chip Chats and Woodcarving UK. Jessie is a chainsaw competitor, taking first place with her Lotus Flower with Leaf in the premier Women in Art Chainsaw Series. She was the first foreigner to compete at the Japanese Chainsaw Carving Championships where she carved, Three Stages of the Rose. At the English Open Chainsaw Carving Competition in 2004, Jessie carved Tree of Life, a piece inspired by Celtic tree spirits that featured 100 blossoms.

This is a very upbeat book, revealing Groeshcen's love of the craft, and tells the individual sculptors' backgrounds, how they came into carving, and how they developed it into a career when the each 'turned a corner.'