My Unforgettable First Chainsaw Carving Show at Bellingham’s SeaFeast
Have you ever looked so incredibly forward to something, and then when it happened it EXCEEDED your expectations by like 10X???
That just happened to me.
This past weekend the SeaFeast festival, at Zuanich Park in Bellingham, was AMMMAAAAZZZZIIIINNNGGGGGGG!!!!!
The organizing team led by my friend and local ambassador-of-awesomeness Kevin Coleman positively KNOCKED IT OUT OF THE STRATOSPHERE!
There were over 8,000 joyful, food-loving, art-adoring, sunshine-seeking people through on Saturday alone! (That was WAY more than expected.)
I lucked out, and had the best seat in the house!
Along with my friend and carving mentor Tomas Vrba, we had the festival's only Chainsaw Carving display and demo area -- right in the thick of Artists' Row!
Read on and I'll share what unfolded.
Hint: I am counting the days until next year's event -- it was THAT good!
Heart = FULL!
Curiosity and LOVE!
Tomas and I each brought a truckload of carvings and some display stands.
We also brought some large slabs of uncarved wood, our chainsaws, and other various shaping tools.
We set everything out by early Saturday morning, and like waves on the incoming tide, it wasn't long before people started to FLOOD Zuanich Park.
Drawn to the carvings, the uncarved "raw" slabs, and the tools, SeaFeasters were outspoken with fascination and curiosity.
Questions and conversations, photos, videos, and inquiry after inquiry flowed like water:
Q: Does the wood "speak to you" about what to carve?
Q: How long did this piece take you?
Q: You really use a chainsaw?
Q: How did you learn to do this?
Q: What got you started?
Q: Can you make me a (fill in this blank with ANYTHING you can imagine!) :)
It was, for this first-time-show-attendee... JUST. SO. MUCH. FUNNN!!!!!
Pieces started selling...
An individual or a couple would occasionally fixate on one piece in particular...
Something about it called to them: the grain pattern, how it had weathered, the specific creature a reminder from a trip they had been on...
I heard countless fascinating stories -- and I enjoyed every one of them.
The Octopus
If there was a centerpiece among all our work that drew people literally from a hundred feet away, it was Tomas's octopus carving.
Eight feet across, exquisitely detailed, perfectly finished, and completely captivating, it was the well-deserving object of endless long stares, gasps, and much contemplation.
The Orca
I'd carved an orca to bring to the show but hadn't had time to paint it, so its relatively featureless form on Day 1 drew no attention.
My style for that piece is to sand it perflectly smooth, rather than leave it "chainsaw-rough," then paint a stylized orca pattern on what would be the black parts.
Early on Sunday morning, before the doors officially opened, as I sipped coffee and chatted with Toma, I zoned out on the orca paint job.
The remaining "would-be-white" areas in this design are left plain cedar, then they get a coat of warm satin oil.
By mid-day, the black acrylic paint had fully dried so I set it on a slab and began applying the oil.
As I applied the stain, the cedar warmed, the patterns in the grain contrasting as the piece came to life.
As I touched up the stain with the tip of the brush, from over my shoulder, I heard someone say:
"We'd like to buy that piece!"
Full heart. :)
As soon as I'd settled with the buyers and made plans for them to return in a couple hours after the oil had dried, a woman who had been watching the oiling (and selling) process, approached me:
"If they hadn't bought the orca just now, I was prepared to. Will you be making another one?"
My answer to this question, for any carving, was always the same:
"I carve as an escape, not as work. But if you don't have a deadline, I'll reach out when I have one made."
To a person, everyone who asked was perfectly gracious and accepting of that answer.
The Sockeye
Later on Sunday, which was a much more mellow and in ways even more enjoyable day...
(...because a less bustling but still-substantial turnout meant longer conversations, deeper stories, and even more connections...)
...a woman and her mother returned several times to look at the jumping sockeye carving -- a new design for me, and in a particular piece of old growth red cedar that I'd fallen in love with.
On the 3rd visit, the woman announced that she'd like to buy it.
I heated my branding iron, stamped my name on the back, and when I handed it to her she hugged it to her chest with a sad look on her face.
"Where will you put it?" I asked her.
"In my living room," she said. "It is a memorial to my husband, who died last year.
She explained that her husband was a life-long commercial fisherman, and last year he died while out at sea.
"His name," she said, "is on the Safe Return memorial just down the boardwalk."
They thanked me again, and walked away with the carving.
Heart even more full.
Gifts and Trades
As Sunday began to quiet and the festival reached its final hour, happy-exhausted from the constant energy of meaningful interactions, I traded two carvings.
The first with an artist, Henry, who had the adjacent booth and, inspired by our carvings, painted a fantastic, espresso-drinking humpback whale.
The other to Vinnie, a member of the Lummi Nation's talented salmon-grilling crew.
The grillers had fed Tomas and I an all-you-can-eat feast of salmon and halibut steaks throughout the weekend, as well as many thousands of other attendees.
As Sunday evening set in, Tomas and I, along with the other vendors, loaded our tools, display stands, and what remained of our carvings and slabs.
All day, between conversations, I had watched a series of oversized lenticular clouds hover and morph shapes above the summit of Mt. Baker, adding to the magical setting.
Then, looking over my shoulder, our little corner of the Salish Sea became more still and stunning with every passing minute.
What a blessed place to have such a weekend.
I have loved Zuanich Park for over 20 years, having staged the kayak leg of the Ski to Sea race from here, in the company of 500 other paddlers and four times as many supporters, onlookers and volunteers.
But this was a new perspective on the place, and one I will treasure forever.
Thank you again, SeaFeast! You have my heart, and I can't wait for next year!
