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09/20/2017 08:30 AMThe loud noise of the chainsaw carving through wood has surprised many an onlooker at the North Haven Fair in the past two years. It’s not a wood-cutting contest—the imposing chainsaw is a tool of the trade for artist Adam Mulholland, who enjoys sharing his passion for creating large wood sculptures.
An electrician for 20 years, Adam was bored with his job and looking for a creative outlet when he met a talented, professional chainsaw carver. With some money in the bank, Adam decided to strike out on his own and pursue his newfound dream.
“I quit my job like two or three days after I’d seen the guy doing it because I couldn’t do it as a hobby…I wanted to do it as a job,” Adam says.
To learn, Adam says he just starting carving things—he thinks his first project was a turtle. He found the craft “super interesting,” and says he didn’t want to carve the same things as everyone else.
Last year, Adam carved out a North Haven Fair sign, and this year he carved a pig standing on its front hooves, inspired by the fair pins depicting a pig with a blue ribbon. Adam says the fair organizers are “super nice” and have been good to him.
“It’s fun to watch those fairs start to make changes, so it’s not the same thing every year and that people want to come back to it,” Adam says, “Besides the wrestling, I think it was the chainsaw carver—those were like the two big [new] things there.”
Adam says he had a lot of people approach him at the fair and tell him they’d never seen anything like what he created. He says it was fun to show people something they’d never seen before. He also hopes that his work can inspire others.
“There was a little girl that stood in front of that pig with a smile on her face, just staring at it for like 20 minutes; I mean she just stared at it with a smile,” Adam says.
Adam has visited schools and given demonstrations of his work, something he hopes to do more of in the future, adding that he thinks there’s a lot of unique jobs out there that people don’t know about because they’re not taught in schools.
“You actually can be an artist without being a tattoo guy,” Adam says with a laugh.
While he wishes he had known about chainsaw carving when he was young—he may not have pursued it right away, but he believes young people should have options to explore.
Saying that everyone wants to be a part of something, Adam thinks the carving community is a good fit for him, adding that his fellow artists are nice people and willing to teach and share their skills.
“It’s like playing guitar, you kind of want to do it with people,” Adam says.
Adam has already been asked to return the North Haven Fair next year, and he has told the organizers he will be back. Now that he’s faster with the chainsaw, he hopes to have set show times for live demonstrations rather than just carving during the day, so his audience can see sculpture from start to finish.
As to what he’ll be carving, Adam won’t know until he gets up to do it.
“I never really make the decision until I start the saw,” Adam says.