That buzzing you hear is art

SEATTLE – Chain-saw-carving school lesson No. 1: Think delicate – the hardest part about sculpting wood with a chain saw isn’t brute strength, but a light touch.

Lesson No. 2: If you plan to make a living at this, expect to carve bears, a lot of bears.

There are other surprising aspects of taking a class at the George Kenny School of Chain saw Carving in Snoqualmie – one of just a handful around the country that teaches people how to make bears, eagles, fish and codgers out of logs. Your fellow students are more likely to be doctors and accountants than displaced loggers. And you don’t have to be Michelangelo to create wooden folk art with a buzzing saw.

“I call it carver therapy,” said George Kenny, founder and instructor of his eponymous school. “You kind of get into your own little world making and creating things.”

But just what kind of person wants to strap on a pair of chain saw chaps and wear goggles and headphones while tearing into downed trees with 8 pounds of loud, vibrating, gas-belching saw? For three days in a row, in 45-degree weather?

One is Laurie Robertson of Preston, Wash., a health care clinical researcher who flies around the globe for work. Robertson has been a customer of George and Frank Kenny’s roadside chain-saw-carving store for a while and contemplating the class for several years, despite her lack of experience with power tools.

On her wedding anniversary earlier this year, she announced to her husband, “That’s it. I’m doing this with or without you.”

Brian Robertson, 50, chose to do it with her. “We spend so much money here, we figured we might as well do it ourselves,” said Robertson, vice president of an aerospace company.

The couple have carving plans for their 5-acre lot and home, including a fence along their driveway in which wooden bears hold up the posts. They like the idea of adding to their homestead with their own sweat and creativity.

Their fellow classmate, Jim Renfroe, saw an ad in the paper and thought chain saw carving would make an interesting hobby. “This is a good way to sweat, I guess,” said Renfroe, 48, who is the third generation in his family to sell wood home products.

Over three days, these three students work on five projects, after learning basic chain saw safety, maintenance and operation.

Before starting his class nearly a year ago, Kenny wondered, what if you built a chain-saw-carving school and no one showed up? He wanted to pass on his hard-won knowledge after years of self-taught trial and error to others.

Despite the substantial $1,499 price tag for his three-day class, more than 50 people have completed it. (It costs $2,199 for the advanced, four-day class.) And many have gone on to sell some of their pieces.

At first, his school got a few tongues wagging in the industry. “Initially, I caught a lot of flak from the old pros, because they thought there’d be carvers on every street corner.”

But, Kenny says there’s more demand than supply for chain-saw-carved sculptures and he hopes to start training teachers who can pass the craft along to others.

Kenny’s Northwest Experience features the consigned work of about 25 carvers at its two stores in Snoqualmie and Allyn, on Hood Canal. Kenny said he sells about half his inventory, or 200 pieces, every month.

George Kenny said the average retail price of a chain saw carving is about $100 a foot and above. A 2-foot-tall bear in his store retails from $150 to $250.

Before wielding a chain saw, Kenny used to manage a chain of tire stores in Michigan. After moving to Washington in 1993, he opened a coffee shop and art gallery with his brother, Frank, but business was slow. One day, a local man asked if the shop would take a carving on consignment. It sold immediately, and a light bulb went off in George Kenny’s head.

He bought a chain saw and started carving in front of the store, drawing a crowd and even selling his first, misshapen bearhead for $20. He kept hacking away at wood, teaching himself chain saw mastery. Winning a division of a major carving competition in Oregon in 2002 gave him the confidence to start teaching others.