“It’s really all about the kids!”
– Kieran Folliard, Kenwood
Kieran Folliard and his wife Lisa Kane live across the street from Kenwood Park. Big, bright new windows in their recently remodeled living room offer a birds-eye view of the park’s playground.
When news came that the 100-yearold Burr Oak in their front yard was dying from disease despite best efforts to treat it, they decided to repurpose it into a sculpture. They saw opportunity to bring surprise and delight to the children playing in the park and trekking past their house enroute to school.
A friend mentioned a chain saw artist who lived in Northfield. Kieran tracked him down, and shortly there - after, the artist, Curtis Ingvoldstad, was commissioned for the job. It was then that Kieran and Lisa learned that Ingvoldstad had worked with another couple, on the other side of lake, and transformed their dying tree into a whimsical sculpture of a No 2. Yellow pencil. Creativity abounds in our fair neighborhoods!
For their sculpture, Kieran and Lisa envisioned a tall giraffe, a fitting subject for a sculpture perched on a slope overlooking the playground.
When Ingvoldstad arrived to start the project, he carefully examined the tree. “He had good insights,” said Lisa. Ingvoldstad pointed out how the wood twisted and stretched in certain areas, mimicking the movement of a giraffe’s neck.
After stripping the tree’s bark, Ingvoldstad used his chain saw to sculpt the giraffe’s body, long neck and mane, and a delicately featured head topped with ossicones (First-graders, invited by Kieran and Lisa to meet the artist in their front yard, can tell you that ossicones are short skin-covered horns helpful in combat.)
In November, with temperatures dropping, Ingvoldstad applied a sealer, deepening the color of the wood and preserving it through winter. With the arrival of warmer weather, Ingvoldstad will return to finish his work of art, already delighting kids of all ages.
If you’ve never seen a giraffe get its spots, now is your chance! Ingvoldstad will be sculpting and applying spots to the giraffe. Keep an eye and an ear out for the buzz of his chain saw.
