January 2012
The Wood Listener
by Lee Allen
Interesting how a hobby can become habit forming as in the case of "The Chain Saw Lady."
Once retired teacher Joan Eerkes picked up a whittling knife to carve a walking stick, the fascination with firewood took over, quickly graduating to carving animal images with a chain saw—a process that recently resulted in completion of a totally handmade log cabin/studio in an isolated area of the Sacramento Mountains above Cloudcroft.
"This has been a dream for my husband Dave and I, ever since we bought this 10-acre mountain property in 2000," she says. "There were so many trees that needed to be thinned and we wanted to put the excess wood to good use while fulfilling that dream."
Name
Joan Eerkes
Resides Near
Cloudcroft
Co-op Member
Otero County Electric
Occupation
Wood Carver
Her Signature Bear
A happy one with a smile just like the one on her front porch.
In Her Words
"Now I listen more to the wood because it tells you which direction you should be taking. Then I wait for the design inspiration—the creative muse—to strike before my saw roars into action."
Aided by a neighbor who owned a sawmill and some family sweat equity from her 90-year-old father, Joan and hubby set off on their cabin-building project without kit or blueprint, working six days a week to get uprights in place, a roof overhead, and walls chinked before winter weather moved in. "We loved spending time in the outdoors looking for timber to turn into logs…tree hunting at 8,000 feet," she says. "We're not afraid to try something new, whether it's cabin building or chain saw carvings. I learned from my design engineer dad to plan things out and anticipate results ahead of time."
Now as she fires up her chain saw and its teeth dig into the log of the day—juniper, ponderosa pine, scrub oak—wood chips begin to fly and a form starts to take shape, anything from the traditional cigar store wooden Indian to smiling bears, howling coyotes, or soaring eagles.
"We initially did a lot of forest property thinning and realized we couldn't burn it all in the fireplace. In fact, until I gained some proficiency in the art, the early days generated a lot of what I called 'designer firewood,'" she says laughing. "But because we felled the raw materials ourselves, if a piece didn't turn out right, the only thing we lost was time and labor.
"Now I listen more to the wood because it tells you which direction you should be taking. I look for individual pieces of gnarled tree, noting which way it curves, the direction the limbs head in. Then I wait for the design inspiration—the creative muse—to strike before my saw roars into action."
There's been a lot of chain saw creativity over the years—from the cigar store Indian ("I don't know why really, just because I've always wanted one I guess") to a detailed horse that took two full summers to complete. In between, it's been mostly bears like the one on her front porch that holds a "Welcome" sign. "I've done all kinds—dancing, sitting, waving, growling—but my signature bear is a happy one with a smile on its face."
Somewhat akin to the artist herself who now smiles, and saws, in her new log cabin studio.
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