Tulsa Chainsaw Sculpture

The detail is very impressive. Coss is a real artist. The sculpture has been saturated with preservative and measures taken to prevent it from decay. Eventually it will deteriorate, but maybe it will be brought inside before that happens. Tulsa used to have a lot of huge old Elm trees that have been decimated by Dutch Elm desease. Most are just cut down and hauled off. To me this is a much better use of the tree. I hope you like it.


There was an abandoned commercial structure here that was torn down and a modern building constructed for the motorcycle dealership. I remember the tree was a very large old Elm that forked into two main trunks. Each side of the fork was used for the two wings. The tree was stubbed off into the large "Y" shape. At the time i wondered why the stump was left standing.


An old Elm tree has been transformed into a large handsome American Eagle in front of the Myers-Duren Harley-DavidsonMotorcycle Shop.

Tulsa is home to chainsaw artist Clayton Coss. That's right, he uses a chainsaw to carve trees into very detailed and beautiful outdoor sculptures. Coss uses three sizes of chainsaw: the largest with a 36-inch bar for the major pieces to be removed, the second having a 16-inch bar for roughing out and the third a pointed 12-inch bar for the fine finish. A "bar" is the metal, slotted blade the cutting chain runs around when the saw is operating. He has done literally thousands of these over the past 20 years.

A recent Artical about Coss from the Tulsa World is HERE:

Clayton Coss has a Web Site HERE:

A time lapse video of Coss sculpting an eagle for the Tulsa Boys Home is HERE: