Two carved wooden benches grace downtown Belfast, both nautical-themed. One is a whale with sailboats and one is a mermaid. Both works of functional art were made by chainsaw artist Pasco Grove, of Winterport. The benches, carved during the All Roads Music Festival as a live event several years ago, now permanently remain.

For Grove, it is no big deal to pick up a chainsaw and begin hacking at a large snag —or a dead, broken tree— and fashion a face or a sculpture out of it.

He works through an interesting art form called chainsaw carving that combines the modern technology of chainsaw carving either on ice or wood with the ancient art of woodcarving.

“I grew up on a farm around a bunch of machinery and my dad is a woodcutter,” said Grove. “I used a chainsaw at a fairly young age and helped him cut wood. As I got older, I started running a chainsaw and my dad influenced me a little bit to try chainsaw art. He got me my first carving bar, which is a smaller bar you put on a chainsaw, and that’s how I started carving little things out of wood like faces and human figurines. It just grew from there.”

Grove always had an artistic bent, whether it was drawing or painting as a kid or pottery-making and sculpting in high school.

“I was always making things out of junk and whittling with a knife,” he said.

Self-taught, his first commission was a large Viking carving for his high school.

His day job consists of working for G.E. in Bangor, but his hobby and avocation, which takes about three or four hours a week, is turning decrepit stumps into anthropomorphic works of art. 

“It is like my stress relief and I get lost in it,” he said.

Besides carving functional art, such as large statues, and even a lifesize Big Foot, he is hired to transform dead tree stumps on homeowners’ properties into interesting sculptures.

His artistic tools have a bite, so he has to take special care to the point of putting up caution tape around public areas where he works.

“Mostly it is for the little kids who love to come running up,” said Grove. “There have been a few times I’ve turned around and someone surprised me by being way too close and I had to shut off the chainsaw.

“It is dangerous,” he admitted, “but I just have to keep in mind certain aspects of using the saw, making sure it doesn’t kick back. There are certain cuts that can become pretty tricky.”

For more of Grove’s work, visit facebook.com/Chainsawmainah