Artist uses chainsaw to turn rotten tree stump into illusion of bucket pouring water
When Gabi Rizea sees a tree or its stump, he doesn’t see bark or heartwood.
He sees Harry Potter, a dragon, or a dew drop.
“Today, for the first time, I came to myself with a sketch,” Rizea told a reporter from Cuvântul Liberatâtii I want to make a leaf with a drop of dew, which I will call ‘Morning Dew.’“
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The Romanian chainsaw artist is a master at turning pieces of wood into marvelous sculptures.
Rizea, who is a forestry engineer by trade, started carving wood into intricate designs in 2014.
He began carving only a few stumps per year for fun. He was able to deepen his craft when his neighbors began asking him for custom pieces.
“I don’t know, in my mind sometimes I have some images,” Rizea told My Modern Met. “When I work, it’s me, the log, and God.”
Sometimes Rizea will sketch out a design before taking a chainsaw to wood.
He’ll often use four or five different kinds of chainsaws on each piece.
He has to stop to refill his chainsaw tanks several times throughout the day. And he has to watch out for things like broken chains. Rizea will switch out his chainsaws every few months.
“I kept trying to make a face and I succeeded. I liked it and continued. Sometimes I make sketches, but in 99% of cases, the drawings do not match the wood. Working in a wood that is no longer useful, dry and damaged, first I have to remove all the rot,” Rizea said.
It typically takes about two day to complete each piece if things go smoothly. He says that he goes into a sort of trance when he is in a flow where “the wood helps me.”
He finds hardwood to be easier to work with while the softer stuff can be more of a challenge.
He’ll use the chain saw to complete about 90 percent of the work. Then he goes in with a chisel to carve out the finer details.
One of his most prize pieces is called “The Flowing Bucket.” It’s a piece of ash wood carved to look like a bucket floating in mid-air and pouring out a stream of water.
Rizea said he didn’t know what that piece was going to be until he started cutting into the wood and realized much of it was rotten.
So, the piece needed to have a thin shape. That shape became flowing water. It’s his favorite piece of work so far. That piece now lives in a public park.
“I work for the public, to make people smile,” Rizea said. “I want to make modern, simplistic art that brings smiles back to people’s faces.”
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Rizea says that he has planted many trees in his day and only uses logs that have been already cut and would just rot away if he didn’t turn them into stunning works of art.
Learn more about Rizea’s work in the video below.
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