(gentle music) - It's a hard job, but I enjoy it and every morning I'm thankful I get to come out and makes more sawdust.

(gentle music) I am Joe Wavra from Red Lake Falls and my little business here is called Klondike Carvings.

I've been carving with chainsaw for about 20 years now.

Part-time to start, but now it's just a full-time.

It's all I do, so keeps me out of trouble and busy.

My wife and I built a log house down between the two rivers in Red Lake Falls where the Clearwater and Red Lake River meet and we built a log house and then she wanted some decor for it and she was gonna buy this and that.

She had plans and I told her, well, let me try to make that for you.

And she said I couldn't do it, so it challenged me to start.

It just kept going, started selling a few of them and the more I did, the more I did and the more that sold it just kept working it up.

And then I was busy working full-time and building a house and carving some.

And then after I got my house finished, then I started carving a lot more.

Like every day I was carving, weekends, and word of mouth was most of it.

People would come and say, oh, can you make me this?

And I'd like, I don't know, but I can try.

That's kinda how it started.

It was a lot of wonder, you know, can you do it?

Will anybody come, will I make this work or not?

You know, you never know until you try, but you gotta roll the dice, you've gotta try it.

If I wouldn't have tried it, I would've not been happy.

(gentle music) I get most of my wood up north of Bemidji, some loggers I know up there and I've been buying from them for about 20 years now.

I'm looking for white pine or red pine normally.

So I like the white better personally, but they both carve really nice.

(gentle music) My style's more like folk art I guess, that's what I'd call it.

I'm not trying to make a realistic looking bear.

I make a caricature bear.

I do a lot of cartoon characters too.

I've done Goofy, Popeye, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, lots of those kind of old classic cartoon characters.

Yeah, there's always bears.

You can never make enough bears.

They're just kind of like meat and potatoes.

Part of the deal, I've made, I don't know how many, they never were my favorite thing to make, but it's what it is.

People want 'em so you just keep punching 'em out.

I used to do a lot of like bears and logs and laying down and different styles.

Like on a bear it's about nine cuts and I can pretty much have one blocked out and then the rest is detail.

Different saws.

I got, I don't know how many chainsaws, 14, 15 different ones that are set up different for whatever I'm doing.

And then I'll do the detail part.

Then you have tools you have to build yourself, like eye tools and there's some weird stuff you wind up learning how to make from other carvers.

I like my flying eagles probably are one of my favorite things to make.

Anything you're trying to get, like flying with the wings spread out is a lot harder than a perched eagle.

They're nice when they're done, they're really pretty.

I do a flag holding eagle that's really popular.

It's a soaring eagle that holds a flagpole.

We have a really nice trail system.

So I got a bunch of benches that I've done for the city.

So people that are on the walking and hiking, biking trails can take a break, sit on a bench.

So I got quite a few of those.

There's a lot of people in town that have supported me very well.

There's sculpture everywhere in town, there's a lot.

My favorite way to work is when I don't have to think about it anymore.

I just start the saw and my hands know what to do.

It's almost like autopilot where I'm not thinking about what I have to do.

I can just do it.

That's I think when I do my best stuff, my body knows what to do.

That's why I like chainsaw.

It's fast.

I call it speed art.

It doesn't take me forever 'cause I don't have a lot of patience.

I do hand carve like some of my human faces and stuff with chisels, but more in the winter when I have more time.

When it's 40 below I don't want to be outside working anyway, so I'll take the hammer and the chisels and knock some stuff out that way and I enjoy that too.

But I do like the saw 'cause you can move a lot of wood fast and things get done.

I just wanna thank the people for supporting me.

It's been hard, it's a lot of work and it's risky.

I mean, I don't know if anything will sell ever, but I got faith in myself and what I can do.

I wake up every morning and I'm happy.

I'm like, oh yeah, I get to go do what I want to do today.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008, and by the members of Prairie Public.