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About Pete ....
Hi there my name is Pete Ryan, I have been carving for 34 years now and still enjoy carving every day, creating new pieces of art for people to enjoy and have around their towns, and have something a little special to add to their homes and gardens.
I started out carving when I came out west to Vancouver from Toronto in 1974, looking for a job as a truck driver. I had a few jobs on the docks driving trucks for a fish factory. Some how I new this was not for me. At that time I saw a man carving with a chainsaw, Don Colp was his name. He was set up in a mall and carving a big horn sheep. I thought that was real cool and looked like fun and decided this was for me. So I bought my first chainsaw, a frontier, the same saw Don used, and started carving. The first pieces were some what crude but never the less people wanted to buy them.
View Sample Images:
Bench's, wildlife, poles, doors and anything else you would like custom built for your log home or lodge.
Mommy bear and her cubs
District of Hope, BC.
About Pete .... continued |
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| I was doing a good little business going to swap meets and carving
on site, then Huskavarna chain saws thought they should have a chainsaw
carver working for them promoting their saws at the dealers stores,
because when you are carving live you always attract crowds of people
who love to watch a bear come out of the log as you carve it, and
people usually want the same saw the carver is using, I then decided to take an art course, something that I always wanted to. It was advertised in the comic books (the one that had a pirate with a patch over his eye). It was a mail order course with art instruction schools out of Minneapolis, USA. |
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It was a four year course with four telephone size books that led to a commercial art degree, and was put on by the top American artist at the time, Les Kobala who also designed all the covers for the old “Field and Stream” magazines, and Norman Rockwell, another great magazine illustrator back then. Remember color cameras never came out until 1960 or so, leaving artist to do the covers of magazines by hand drawings, and they only hired the best. My art had improved quite a bit by this time with a better direction of how to go about creating characters, and using form. I have worked for McCullough chainsaws learning the ins and outs of marketing saws and carvings, doing shows all over Canada for seven years. I still continued to do shows for Pollan chainsaws for a while. Then I moved to Hope BC, where I came up with a proposal to carve a dead tree for the city. It turned out to be a hit with tourist and most the town folks. It wasn’t long after that I had made an agreement to carve another some 27 carvings around town sponsored by local businesses. It has worked out real well with tourist coming every year by the bus load, to take pictures, I also have many other towns and lodges who see these carvings and come and find me to commission a carving for their resort, most return for more. |
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I am now in the process of carving a number of pieces for the city
of Langley. They want to show the city’s history in wood, and
what and who was there when the town started. These carvings are also
sponsored by local business’s, in the area. Pete Ryan |
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