Teacher has dead tree carved into sculpture

AMES (AP) ? Sawyer Elementary School teacher Theresa Braune loves her pets, her first-graders and reading. She decided to get all of them carved into one sculpture when a white oak standing in her yard died.

Enter Curtis Ingvoldstad, of St. Paul, Minn. A chainsaw carver who works all over the United States, he began the first stages of a 20-foot-tall sculpture recently. Neighbors and passersby at Braune?s house on the corner of Wilson Avenue and 16th Street in Ames stopped to see the beginnings of a purple coneflower blossom and a parrot emerge from the very top, as Ingvoldstad worked in a cloud of flying sawdust and woodchips.

Braune said the design will include a little girl reading from a book, with the story from the book ?unfolding? to include the flower, and Braune?s pets, past and present, including Chiquita, a parrot, and Dolly, a mixed-breed dog, both deceased, and black Labrador retriever Dolly, a greyhound Tutu, and a golden retriever mix Ruth.

?All of my pets are rescues, and, in my classroom, I teach a lot about animals and why it?s important to care for them well,? said Braune, who has taught first grade for 15 years. ?My classes do fundraisers for the Ames Animal Shelter, too.?

The little girl reading is fundamental to the design of the sculpture, Braune said, ?because reading is one of the most important things a young child will ever learn.?

Ingvoldstad said he began as an engineer student studying at Iowa State University, but the science just didn?t take. From there, he went on to earn an art degree at the University of Minnesota and to jobs in video production.

?I never started out to be an artist,? he said. ?Even in my drawing classes in architecture, my teachers would ask me if I?d ever considered being an artist. I thought it was crazy.?

Once he got started in chainsaw sculpture, his interest took off, and by the time he lost his job in video, Ingvoldstad said, he was carving in competitions and starting up chainsaws with some of the best carvers in the world.

?I told my wife, ?I?m probably not going to be as good at anything else as I am at this,? and I decided to do this full time,? he said.

Ingvoldstad estimated he will go through about 5 gallons of 2-cycle oil for the project and will sharpen each of his six chainsaw blades three or four times for the week-long project.

?This is a wonderful project,? he said. ?Theresa is a fantastic person, and this obviously means a lot to her. What motivates me, as an artist, is taking someone?s inspiration and making it reality.?