HYDE PARK — Starting Monday in Nichols Park, an artist will take a chainsaw to two old stumps until they look like a heron and a wolf.
The Chicago Park District has enlisted Jim Long, an amateur chainsaw artist, to transform two dead trees into sculptures rooted to the park at 1355 E. 53rd St.
Long said Tuesday that he expects to get to work next week on the two sculptures, which will mostly consist of him swinging a chainsaw while perched on top of a ladder.
“When I’m doing carving, I’m doing everything you’re not supposed to do with a chainsaw,” Long said.
Long admits he never trained in chainsaw carving, but taught himself after watching a man do it on the side of the road while driving home when he was living in Utah.
“I took a chainsaw and a piece of wood and made an eagle out of it after I saw that guy,” Long said. “Now, it’s a hobby run amok.”
He’s been practicing and has now done more than a dozen carvings, including a sculpture of an eagle catching a fish near Hayes Drive and 63rd Street in Jackson Park.
Stephanie Franklin, president of the Nichols Park Advisory Council, said the park has hoped to get a tree carving for at least three years. She said she was thrilled that two ashes that recently died from an emerald ash borer infestation would be carved by Long.
“The big one was the third in a row,” Franklin said. “This summer it was clear it was completely dead.”
The two trees’ limbs were cut off to Long’s specifications last week and once fences goes up he will start turning the ash stump in the middle of the park into a wolf.
He said it would take several weeks to finish the sculptures if the weather is good.
Michael Dimitroff, manager of art initiatives for the Park District, said Long’s sculptures would be the fourth and fifth trees currently being carved in a park.
He said Ron Gard is currently finishing the second of three trees for “Fair Curve,” a sculpture started in last year in Lincoln Park near North Avenue and LaSalle Street.
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