The Kemble chainsaw massacre

There’s a gal who lives not too far from here who is making quite a name for herself in the world of chainsaw art. I’m guessing that’s not a particularly large world, but I’ll take her over Damien Hirst any day of the week.

Last time I cut down an elm along the drive, I deliberately left about a twelve foot stump so that she could create one of her masterpieces right here at Falling Downs. That was three years ago. Maybe four by now. We had a couple of discussions and agreed on a price. For $600 she was going to do a likeness of Job from one of William Blake’s drawings.

Well, like I said, the gal has become a minor celeb, and I think that what happened is that she kept putting it off and putting it off, and by the time my name came to the top of the to-do list, $600 seemed  a little light, and there were lots of other folks lined up with their wallets hanging out, and eventually I was forgotten.

Now as an award winning sculptor myself (a very minor award I might add – first in class at the Walkerton Art Gallery juried art show in 1998) I’m not intimidated by “art”, and as regular readers well know, I’m not intimidated by chainsaws either, so while I was working in  the driveway anyway on that other elm I thought I’d have a go at replicating Blake’s Job on my own.

How hard can it be?

So armed with nothing more than my pick-up with a step-ladder in the back, and of course my trusty Stihl,  I got to it. Not too hard to get the general shape of the head. Matter of fact, before you start in with the facial details it sort of looks like a dick.

So I’m trying to get those facial details, and I’m sitting atop the stepladder with this book of Blakes drawings.  Fuck me, this ain’t gonna be as simple as I thought.

In my own artistic career I stick with “abstract” for good reason. No matter what it looks like, you can say you meant to do it. That gives you a bit of a buffer zone.

Things weren’t going too badly with the facial features, when suddenly I realized I hadn’t got the hair! Shit! Blake’s Job has a generous amount of hippy-type, almost dread-locky hair. I’ve got the eyes way too high in the face to make this work… Damn!

Luckily, I still had ten feet of tree trunk to work with after I lopped off Job’s head for the do-over.

This time I was going to start right at the top, with the hair. Turns out that’s way easier to say than it is to do. I kept trimming back the hair and trimming it back… eventually I had Job with a fucking mohawk.

Fuck that… it just looks stupid.

So I lopped off Job’s head again. Now I’m down to an eight foot stump. I’m starting to have second thoughts about Job. Maybe I should start with something a little less challenging for my first chainsaw sculpture… a likeness of one of the hounds? Something abstract?

I should stick with something simple, something I know well…

Long story short, if you wonder why there is a six foot likeness of my dick halfway up my driveway, now you’ve got the back story.