One of the amazing human skills is creating art. Art can turn anything we find into something totally amazing. Many artists prefer traditional mediums like stone and clay for their creations. But the chainsaw artist Gabi Rizea prefers using wood. Some of his best creations are made out of the kind you would pay someone to get rid of out of your yard. Gabi prefers using rotting tree stumps. This Romanian artist has become a viral sensation due to some of his amazing tree stump transformations. He only started carving wood designs in 2014.
His knowledge and expertise with a chainsaw have grown by leaps and bound since that time. Now he is clever to take a hunk of wood and mold it into all kinds of mind-blowing shapes while showcasing the best qualities of his material. Gabi’s is a forest engineer and that has also helped him hone his incredible talent and create some truly amazing results. His newest creation, titled “Apa,” which Romanian means “water,” shows a pail with water flowing down onto a tree stump. Gabi used a rotting ash stump he discovered in the woods to create this work of art. As insects had already begun eating away at the stump, finishing it was a big challenge to him. But, anyhow he created this mind-blowing sculpture. His captivating artwork can be seen in a children’s park located in Craiova, Romania.
Gabi told My Modern Met, when he was asked where he came up with the idea to create Apa:
“I don’t know, in my mind sometimes I have some images. When I work, it’s me, the log, and God.”
Gabi first has some fun with the wood before he begins with the intended design of his sculpture. Gabi carved a simple face into a tree trunk.
Lot of artists, painters to sculptors, to even musicians play as it is very important for them. Some of the greatest works of art came from artists just “playing around.”
Gbi transformed a rough and hard wood into a silky-smooth surface with his latest sculpture. It looks like a smooth flowing fluid pouring over the stump. The wood’s natural grain adds to the movement and also the structure of the “water” pouring out of the bucket. Then the water joins with the base of the raw stump that has one section touching the ground.
The artist is 42-year-old and he discovered his latent talent for woodcarving by accident. He purchased a new chainsaw and tried using it to carve a human face into a piece of wood just for fun, a couple of years ago. Since then, he was working with it. Some of his neighbors noticed his work and began requesting to create some art for them as well.
“I sometimes make sketches of the designs I want to carve, but in 99% of cases, the wood just doesn’t match my ideas.”
The artist said in a recent interview with CVL Press, “Because I have to work with old, highly deteriorated wood, I first have to remove all the rotten parts, and sometimes, what’s left isn’t enough for my designs.”
The local officials in his hometown of Craiova let him work on old tree setups all over the city’s local parks. His creations are admired and seen by many people now.
Gabi has become a world-renowned artist almost overnight once pictures of his work started appearing online.
He hopes to go to an art school to improve his self-taught skills and learn more about the ins and outs of woodcarving. Here’s Gabi hard at work in this fascinating video.
sources used: shared.com