“Nana Chainsaw” talks about finding her new favorite art form

Toni Whitney has been an artist since childhood. When a windstorm blew through two years ago and downed a ton of trees around her property, she decided to grab a chainsaw and pursue a new art form. Though chainsaw carvings are much different from her other mediums, in a short period of time, Whitney’s bear busts and statues have gone from what she describes as “whimsical,” to detailed and realistic.

“That huge windstorm, there were microbursts that blew everything down…we lost so many trees. So, we just worked on the trees and we had so much firewood that we had a bunch of wood leftover so I started making bear heads for fun— I didn’t think much of it until this year. This past spring we had another windstorm that knocked down more trees, so I decided to start trying more realistic (carvings) and I loved it,” she said.

Whitney’s Stihl chainsaws are distinctly marked with a bedazzled “NC.” She said she was dubbed “Nana Chainsaw” by her 11-year-old granddaughter and wears the title proudly as she continues to hone in on her craft. She said she’s loved art since she was small, then became a professional graphic artist in her 20’s. When she moved to Bigfork more than two decades ago, she started licensing out her quilt patterns to the town’s quilt shop.

In 2008 she decided to start her own business in the fiber arts with the help of her husband. She said it was something that “worked out perfectly,” and kept both of them afloat during the recession. Whitney also makes acrylic paintings, some of which she said have previously hung in galleries. Painting is something she can go back to when she is tired of quilting and carving. She said some of her paintings will be at the Charlie Russell Miniature Auction in March.

When it came time to learn more about chainsaw carving, she took to the internet and became a member of a Facebook group for beginners.

“I found a beginners carving chainsaw group, and they were just the nicest people. I would ask questions and they would tell me, give me a bunch of answers, so I just started with that. I made a couple of good friends from it, and I’m not much of a Facebook person before, but it was very, very helpful in learning the basics of it,” she said.

Working with wood can come with it’s caveats— buzzing into a log with a heavy chainsaw can make the intricate work of carving difficult. She said if she makes a wrong cut during the blocking stage of carving it’s game over.

“If I do the wrong cut, it becomes firewood, so I can ruin a nice big piece of wood just with one wrong cut…especially when you’re punching through the wood and you don’t know where you are coming out on the other side.” she said.

Despite the challenge, Whitney loves working with wood. She said the imperfections in the wood give her carvings character. She never paints over it and chooses to stain it instead, leaving knots and the natural color of the wood to shine through. She said her love of bears also permeates in her work— they served as her inspiration for her first carvings. Nestled closely to the Swan Mountains, she said they see bears on their property all the time.

“Oh I love them, we see so many of them around here and I just love watching them,” she said.

Her first carvings of bears are more cartoonish, describing them as “whimsical,” with fat faces and cute eyes. Since transitioning to realistic statues, she’s fallen more in love with carving but said it can take several tries before she is happy with the end results.

Whitney said she’s always been driven to pick-up new mediums because of the challenge it presents.

“I’ve always done that— I’ll pick-up something to challenge myself until I feel like I’ve gotten good at it, then I’ll find something else to do,” she said.

Though her busts and statues would prove she is already good at carving, Whitney plans to keep on transforming logs into bears, wolves, horses and more.

“I want to keep going more realistic and bigger. I’ve got some big logs down there now that I’m going to attempt this summer to make into a huge, six-foot-tall bear. I think that would be fun,” she said.

Find out more about Whitney’s art at https://www.toniwhitney.com/.