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Photo by Christopher Lugo/Staff Chainsaw carver and owner of Extreme Sculpting, Chris Lantz, said his overall goal is to carve large pieces that houses are centered around.
13 years ago, Chris Lantz left his home with nothing but the clothes on his back, a twenty-dollar bill, a pack of cigarettes and a dream to become the best chainsaw carver in the world.
A couple of days later, Lantz was homeless, sleeping in an onion cellar on two church pews. Now, Lantz is making a name of himself in the chainsaw carving world with his business, Extreme Sculpting, travelling around the nation to compete and to perform.
Chainsaw carving, Lantz said, goes back to his father and uncle back in 1989.
“My father and uncle were really heavy into partying and drugs until they started going to a church in Melbourne, Fla., and met a man named Ted Travers,” Lantz said. “He told my dad and uncle that he felt led by God to teach them how to chainsaw carve. It’s more than me seeing my dad carve and me wanting to do it. It was more of me seeing my dad and all of his friends and thinking, ‘If these idiots can do it, so can I.’ One of my favorite people to watch carve was one of my older cousins, Mike. He had the most unique style and was the most in love with the artform. I would sit in the sawdust when I was eight or nine and years old and would just watch him.”
When it comes to chainsaw carving, Lantz said one aspect of it that he loves is the fluidity of the job.
“You can pretty much make it however you want it,” Lantz said. “That is one of the great things about it. Also, you never get there. It’s not like these other jobs where you master it in its entirety, and you know everything. Once you get decent at chainsaw carving, you either one, get complacent and only carve those things or you have a hunger and a genuine drive to pursue not just chainsaw carving, but wood sculpture more in depth. Once you open the bag of wood sculpture it is something else in its entirety. You have to have a really broad horizon. A lot of people can do bears, eagles and pelicans, but that might be where their skills end. That is great and all, but I wanted to pursue it more in depth to where I could be proficient in a lot of things. I’m still a student now.”
The main difference between back in 2009 when Lantz was homeless to now, he said, is that he knows how to fix his mistakes.
“In the very beginning, you make mistakes, and you have no idea what you’re doing,” Lantz said. “But the more mistakes you are willing to make in your life and the more times you’re willing to fail, the more you are actually going to be successful because those are all lessons. There is a quote that says, ‘Cursed is the man who knows neither victory nor defeat.’ So, you have to try.”
When Lantz first starts out on a piece, he said it starts with a bare log.
“For the most part, I’m going to start out with just a log,” Lantz said. “If it has dirt on the bark, I’m going to strip it off, but I’m going to use primarily chainsaws. I come back with a large torch, and I burn the bark and then come back with a tool called a flap sander, which is a bunch of sandpaper on a long bolt, and it helps refine it. Those are for the simple pieces. For higher end, higher quality pieces, you are going to want to use dremels or chisels to finish them out differently, but for the most part, I use the chainsaw. It gives it a more vintage look to it. The majority of people want that vintage, rustic look.”
Now living in Mount Airy, Ga., Lantz said he spent a lot of his time traveling around the country to perfect his art.
“Whenever I found carvers that were better than me, I would go to where they were at and I would try and study different techniques they were using,” Lantz said. “It came down to where we were going to have our first kid and I decided to start looking for houses that were an hour away from Gainesville’s hospital. After that, we found this place and it sounded like a perfect place.”
For those that look at Lantz’ work and are interested in picking up a chainsaw, he leaves them with a quote by Henry Ford.
“’Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right,’” Lantz said. “I think, first off, you have to believe in yourself. If you don’t believe that you can, then you never will. If you can win the battle with your mind first, then doing it is the easy part.”
Lantz wife, Courtney, was around chainsaw carving at the time she met Lantz, but she said his work quickly became the best she had ever seen.
“My mom was dating someone at the time that was a chainsaw carver, and I thought his work was amazing,” Courtney Lantz said. “Chris is 10,000 times better than him. I was blown away. He became the new standard of chainsaw carving for me.”
Still traveling around the country carving in competitions and performing, Lantz said his overall goal is to carve large pieces that houses are centered around.
“Ultimately, my dream is to have people build their houses around my sculptures,” Lantz said.
In April 2012, Lantz surrendered his life to Jesus Christ and has since quit smoking cigarettes. He and his wife have two daughters, Evelyn and Charlotte.
- By Christopher Lugo