Made in CT: Chainsaw carver gives tree stumps new life through his art

One man is turning fallen trees into a work of art. We have the story in this week's Maiden. I love carving because it allows me to express my creativity and use my brain and the world goes away. Everything goes away. It's just me and the stump, me and my art, trying to figure it all out. My name is Jared Welcome and I'm a chainsaw carver. I've been chainsaw carving for maybe 14 years now. I'm all over the state of Connecticut. I'm a teacher full-time at a maximum security prison in Connecticut for Department of Correction. So maybe like 15 years ago, I was watching a TV show and I saw them doing chainsaw carving and I felt in my stomach, I could do this. Primarily when I start, I use a big 55 to 60 CC chainsaw to block everything out. Then I use some of my smaller chainsaws that have special carving bars on them. And then finally I use power tools such as sanders and stuff to really fine tune the details. And then I paint it or customers sometimes want it left natural. A lot of the jobs I get are called onsite jobs. I use Connecticut sourced trees to make my art and I repurpose stumps in people's yards to give it a new life and allow that tree to live even longer. You try to make them look like they're actually moving or that there's something, you want an emotion to evoke from all this. I try to make every single carving look different, make them all special to the customer because the customers are special to me. So a lot of these stumps that we have now were once majestic trees. They were homes to squirrels and birds and a lot of various wildlife that were in here. To repurpose a tree, it just feels good to give it a new life and a new purpose and do something fun with it. We're highlighting the people making, creating and building something special right here at home. Join us for Made in the Tri-State tonight at 8 p.m.