Tags: I see it this way!

Jon Falk, who resides in Westmont NJ, is a retired Philadelphia Daily News picture editor.  Besides  his wife, The Queen, and his children, he just loves his grandchildren. Think I'm kidding?  Well, just read an email he sent to a bunch of his old  photography cronies: ---------- ---------------- ------------------ -------------------- -------------------- Yo - Finally hooked up with the chain saw wood artist on a good weather day and the carving began. He worked 8 hours non stop, used a variety of saws and when it was over we had our bunny. This was an intentional 6-1/2 foot stalk left over from a magnificent oak tree that had to come down. He's working on the 4 ft. diameter starter piece and had an audience of one three year old. Brian Ackley is the wood cutting guy. I have no idea how he got his start. Our grandson Nathaniel was up early to watch. The 'bunny model' sits on the step next to him. While Brian eyeballs the next angle Nathaniel waits for the next move. It is very noisy & dusty. A chunk here and a chunk there soon ends up in a 'block' shape resembling the bunny. Nathaniel had to go inside away from the noise and choking sawdust. Here's he's looking through our new full length exterior glass door. Note the ear shape on the early stages of the sculpture. Seeking different views during the event I could not pass up one through the porch screen. Time passed and soon Nathaniel had ahold of his blue blanket as he continued to watch. Brian studied the progress and considered every next move. No mistakes are allowed. Finally a 'block like' version of the actual piece emerged. The rest of the day was rounding off and shaping and doing detail work. Detail work like smoothed out ears and eyes and a nose. Nathaniel finally caved and in the middle of the afternoon he was o - u - t. Again, seeking angles I found one through the glass pains of the new inside door. The finished bunny in all his glory. Across the street is our neighbor Erica's house. She is convinced we have lost our mind(s). The blue coloring in the bunny is from imbedded nails/hooks from about 50 years ago. This last shot is after an intensive hours long clean up the following morning, before forecast rain. Two dozen BIG bags of sawdust were shoveled up and loaded into Zaidel's (our yard guy's) truck. As was a good deal of the scrap wood, maybe a couple of hundred pounds worth. About 5 thousand pounds of big oak wood slabs and chunks were chained sawed by Zaidel to small pieces. The neighbor on one side loaded his wheel barrow a dozen times and took the wood to split later. If we can get a dry spell and have sixty degree temps I am supposed to treat the wood and the base. The bunny gets slathered in oil base water proof polyurethane. The base gets a carpenter ant/termite treatment. If we don't get that spell he has to be done in lemon oil over the winter. The tree was one of nature's grand examples, but became a liability. Our choice was to take it all the way down and pay a stump removal guy $700 to eliminate it, plus yard repair. The wood artist cost $700 to make something lasting from the tree, and funny to me and others. Ridiculous and silly to some, for sure. But hey, it was our tree. A 6-8 ft. long 4+ foot diameter oak tree piece weighs 15,000 pounds, said the crane operator during take down. Chain Saw Brian says this is about 10,000 pounds should someone cut it off and try to move it : > ) He added that if a car hits the car loses. The Queen likes it (at least she said so) from both profiles, but does not like the front face view. Oh well. The grand children have been given the responsibility to conduct a naming contest among themselves. I'm sure at Easter time we will enhance bunny's environment with big eggs. Cheers. J F -