MERRIFIELD– What better way to make use of a dying tree than giving it new life as an art piece?
Peter Bachman and Janet Rice made a stunning addition to their property by hiring Nick Kelley to carve what they’ve been told is one of Crow Wing County’s oldest white pines into a larger-than-life Viking on water skis.
I like doing large-scale things, I like doing the big stuff.
Nick Kelley, artist
Bachman and Rice said the massive tree could have been a danger to their cabin if it fell, so there was nothing to do but cut it down.
“Well, we just love the white pine, you know, it was just a magnificent tree,” Bachman said. “And we really wanted to, you know, do something with it. So when the people that we hired cut it down, we asked them to leave about 15 feet.”
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The stump sat there for two years before the couple found Nick Kelley’s website,
. Kelley, who lives in Ballston Lake, New York, drove 20 hours one way to reach Bachman, Rice and their tree.
Kelley, who is 29, has been carving sculptures since 2018, starting with just a couple small chain saws and wood sanders. Now he has a whole array of specialized tools and drives all over to reach clients, but Bachman and Rice’s request was the farthest trip he’s made so far.
“I saw the picture of the tree and I said, ‘Wow! That could be really, maybe, something cool,’” Kelley said. “I like doing large-scale things, I like doing the big stuff.”
Bachman said his grandchildren inspired the idea for the sculpture when they suggested a bear on water skis, a reference to the family’s love of the activity, but he and Rice felt a bear was too unoriginal. When they saw another Viking on Kelley’s website, Bachman and Rice decided that would be the tree’s new shape, partially in honor of the Minnesota Vikings.
Kelley said his artistic process was fairly improvisational and a bit difficult to describe. It’s creative and fulfilling, he said, but also like solving a puzzle.
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“What I do is I find — I carve something, I find something, and then work off that one thing,” Kelley said. “And in this case it was the horn of the Viking helmet.”
Bachman and Rice said this process was very impressive to watch.
“He just got up to the very top, and he started carving the horns, then he carved the helmet, then he carved the face and the beard, and he did all the detail on it before he started to move down,” Bachman said, describing Kelley’s carving process. “I asked him when it was over, I said, ‘You know, if when you got here, we talked about doing the Viking on water skis, if I would have said we changed our mind and we wanted something completely different, would that have been any problem?’ And he says, ‘Oh, no, no problem at all.’ I said, ‘Would you have been able to start right away?’ And he goes, ‘Oh, yeah, I would have just got up there and carved it.’”
Caroline Julstrom, intern, may be reached at 218-855-5851 or cjulstrom@brainerddispatch.com.
Caroline Julstrom finished her second year at the University of Minnesota in May 2024, and started working as a summer intern for the Brainerd Dispatch in June.
