FOR the best part of a decade Iain Chalmers has been carving quite a reputation for himself — quite literally.
Tomorrow Iain will be defending his title at Carve Carrbridge — chainsaw carving’s Scottish Open.
"There are 25 carvers registered this year, but only six from Scotland," he pointed out. "You get an eight foot log, four hours and a chainsaw and the only limit to your design is whether you can complete it in those four hours. It’s a really exciting challenge."
Iain admits that last year’s win came as a surprise to him, perhaps because he diverted from his usual practice of having a clear idea of what he was going to carve before he got to Carrbridge sports field, where the competition takes place each year.
"It’s always a gamble because four hours is no time, so most people just go for the one big thing, but when you have 25 carvers all doing something original over seven or eight years, you kind of run out of ideas" he said. "I had something in my mind right up to an hour before the competition started, but once I got there I decided I had no chance of winning, so I thought I’d go for something popular and try for the sympathy vote, so I did a family of bears."
That entry, "Bear Necessities", impressed the judges enough to give Iain the title.
Now, with the competition attracting interest from championship winners from elsewhere in the British Isles as well as visiting European and North American competitors, he just has to up his game to see if he can keep the title in the Highlands.
Iain has his own business, Chainsaw Creations, but it was a challenge to a neighbour that started him on a path to a new career.
"My neighbour was in forestry college and for one of his exercises had to carve a mushroom. I was laughing at how terrible it was, so he said: ‘I’d like to see you do better.’ So I carved one," Iain explained.
Iain gave the mushroom to his mother, who liked it so much she wanted a set. Then other relations started putting in requests.
"My father likes eagles so he asked me if I could carve him an eagle. I said I’d try, and it all started from there."
Watching him in action at shows and exhibitions, people often tell Iain he must have a natural gift for carving, but he admits when he started off he ended up with "lots of funny shaped firewood."
Iain already had plenty of experience with a chainsaw, having spent eight years felling wood commercially until hand cutting was phased out by the introduction of timber harvesters. He then moved from cutting down trees to growing them, keeping an eye on eight million Christmas trees for a Danish company.
However, he had started his working life cutting up plant matter on a much smaller scale as a chef.
Iain, who is originally from Muir of Ord, enjoyed his time as a chef at a small west coast hotel, but was less keen on the long hours he worked.
"You started at seven and finished at 11 and you’d never know it was summer outside," he said.
At first he combined his embryonic carving business with his day job.
"The turning point was the Royal Highland Show. I came back from there with so many orders that I decided I needed to go full-time to meet them. That was five years ago and I haven’t looked back since," he stated.
"Every week I’ve got something unusual. This week I got orders for all the characters from Beatrix Potter for a nature trail and I’m doing a four foot tractor now. That’s good. It keeps it all interesting."
Iain admits his preference is for animals and nature subjects, suitable for a man whose ideal escape is fishing and who takes inspiration from the wildlife he sees every day on the Black Isle or the more domesticated animals — dogs, cats and hens — who live in or around the family’s 18th century cottage just east of Culbokie
However, he is willing to tackle any challenge he is commissioned to.
Competitions and demonstrations are a different matter. There Iain has a free choice of what to carve, but done with the time constraints that allow it to be started and finished in a day so showgoers have the chance to see the finished article.
This can take him across Scotland, though with two young sons, Ewan (11) and Robbie (9), he has not been able to go much further afield.
As the number of competitions demonstrates, chainsaw carving seems to be increasing in popularity, but that is not something which worries Iain.
"There are more people doing it all the time, which is good," he said.
"As with artists, there will come a time when people can look at a carver and say: ‘I don’t like his stuff, but I like this other guy’s.’ Everyone has their own style, like a painter.
"If you asked me about mine, I’d say I’m quite a realist. I carve things quite accurately — or at least I try to. I try and give my carvings a bit of life, like having a cat looking down on a mouse — but trying to put a bit of life in a piece of wood is not always easy!"
Sculptors who use stone often talk about "seeing" the finished statue with a block of granite or marble. Unfortunately for those whose main artistic tool is a chainsaw, things may not be as simple.
"If you go to someone’s garden and see a trunk with lots of tree roots around it, you have to think about what would fit in there, but most logs are just straight bits of wood," he said,
"I tend to use durable soft woods like redwood, cedar and Douglas fir, and when it comes to size, the bigger the better."
Which possibly explains why one of the projects Iain is proudest of is the fantasy landscape he has created at Culloden Drive.
Smithton and Culloden Community Council spent £15,000 to commission and instal the carvings, benches and tables at the woodland park.
Though vandals attacked some of Iain’s work last weekend, overturning a large wooden table and scrawling graffiti on it, the project remains a favourite, in part
because it was such a challenge to complete.
"Some of the trees were 14 feet tall by four feet wide. There were seven stumps all together," he said.
"The community council got together and wanted a fantasy theme, so I went for dragons, wizards and faeries.
"I was working off cherry-pickers and it was hard going and I’d never carved a dragon or a wizard before, but I think it worked."
The other project that springs to mind when Iain is asked what work he is most proud of is one that took him to new heights — the Cairngorm Mountain base camp.
"They wanted a series of everything that walks, crawls, flies or grows in the Cairngorm National Park," he said.
"I can’t even tell you what’s there because it is everything. Some of them must have weighed a tonne at least and we had to take them through a normal doorway and set them up inside the building and I’d be there until 2am setting it up."
