Buddha Garden Art, Chain Saw Carving, Unlikely Pair

August 16th, 2011

Usually chain saws and Buddha are not words you find together.  But at the home of a St. Louis yoga teacher and lawyer the 15 feet tall Buddha sculpture in the front yard is the work of a chain saw artist who usually creates wild animals from the wood of dead trees, instead of sculptures meant to invoke serenity and enlightenment.

Several years ago, a large forty foot tall tulip tree died in the front yard.  Instead of cutting the tree down and grinding out the stump and roots, Stacy Robinson was called in to do his magic to the large tree trunk.  The result is a serene, golden toned sculpture that is surrounded by a garden full of coral bark maples, a small weeping red bud tree, and many different kinds of perennials.

I know this sculpture because earlier this year I created a garden design that surrounds Buddha in the front of the house, and the gardens in the back that enclose the landscape.  The Buddha sculpture invokes both a sense of calmness and a chuckle.  The chuckle comes from not only the image of a chain saw sculptor carving into a tree with the loud noise and gassy smell in an elegant neighborhood of turn of the twentieth century brick and stained glass window homes, but also the expectation of a finished sculpture depicting a standing bear or other wilderness animal. Instead Buddha appears in an unexpected place, made of an unexpected material and done by an unexpected creator.  How is that for a koan?