J. Chester Armstrong
J Chester Armstrong
With collectors who include Bert Reynolds, Clint Eastwood, Olivia Newton-John, Nick Nolte, President Bush, Michael Jackson - all counted as his friends - J Chester Armstrong has come a long way since he began teaching at a YMCA camp in the 1970's. While at Spirit Lake, Washington, he wanted to introduce the campers to Native American Northwest totem poles. Unable to find anyone to teach the class, he decided to teach it himself and found he had a natural gift for shape and proportions. "I can 'see' the forms in the raw logs. It is like Michelangelo says, just take away everything that doesn't look like 'nine horses running'." And for the last 40 years, chainsaw, grinders, and chisels in hand, he has done just that.
Chester Armstrong's roots run deep in Central Oregon, his chosen home. Born and raised in Berkeley, California, he attended UC Berkeley in the 1960's and graduated with a degree in poetic theory and philosophy. His travels eventually brought him to Oregon where he found a place where "the stars are not drowned out by city lights". He has lived there for the past 35 years with singer songwriter wife, Anastacia.
"I am hooked on wood sculpture," says Armstrong. Out of local Oregon woods (juniper,maple, pine, and walnut), he carves the world he sees around him. "Eagles, ospreys, wolves, cougars, coyotes howling at the moon, herons perched majestically at the river's edge, -- the magic of life. This is what moves me. This and the wild herds of mustangs that inhabit the west of my imagination."
Armstrong is best known for his horses, thundering herds moving rhythmically as one. Although his horses look like horses, he says "the art of sculpture is not to recreate the world verbatim, but to interpret it." His sculptures are charged with movement and emotion.
"Wood sculpture, like stone sculpture, is a subtractive process. You 'take away' to reveal the form within. Arduous and demanding, it requires both artistic inspiration and physical perspiration. It is yielding but not forgiving. It does not allow for mistakes."
Rising from the ashes
Sisters artist Skip Armstrong rebuilds after tragic studio fire by Andrew Moore / The Bulletin Jun 30, 2007 Updated Jan 31, 2020 0
It was a total disaster.
In January, the studio of Sisters woodcarver J. Chester “Skip” Armstrong burned to the ground. His iconic chain saw sculptures were reduced to ash, as were a mountain of tools and countless treasures and mementos collected over a lifetime.
But for Armstrong, the most disturbing was the destruction of the studio, his “creative center,” where he had carved out memorable works — and a noteworthy career — over the last 30 years.
“It was kind of like an organic relationship I had there,” said Armstrong. “It was in my blood.”
The studio was on property east of Sisters where he had also lived for many years, in a rustic house that included a five-story self-designed but not-to-code observation tower. Five years ago, however, Armstrong moved to a wooded 20-acre “compound” bordering national forestland southwest of Sisters. But it was only to live; he commuted to the studio, now owned by his ex-wife, to work. The place was a key ingredient in his recipe for success.
“I didn’t want to move,” he said.
Fate intervened. In what he now describes as a “cosmic re-ordering,” Armstrong accidently torched his beloved studio. He left a piece of wet walnut on a heater to dry and promptly forgot about it. He drove to Portland and while there, received a call from his daughter. The studio was consumed. Entirely. Nothing was salvaged.
What did survive was Armstrong’s creative drive and his zest for life. Six months later, he’s building a new studio and amassing new tools. He’s staring over, “just what everybody wants to do at 58,” he quipped.
Before the fire
Armstrong grew up in the Bay Area, attracted to art at an early age. Even more telling, he earned a Boy Scout merit badge in whittling. In college, however, at the University of California, Berkeley, Armstrong said he didn’t find relevance in art. He instead earned a degree in philosophy, inspired by the learning experience and the social turbulence of Berkeley in the late ’60s,
But afterward, Armstrong said he realized, “Words are just words. I said, ‘What do I really want to do?’”
The answer was art. Armstrong traveled a bit before ending up in Washington state, where he took a teaching job at a summer camp. He wanted to introduce kids to woodcarving, and so picked up a chain saw to grab their attention. According to “Chain-Saw Sculptor,” a book about Armstrong by Sharon R. Sherman, it grabbed his as well.
Armstrong left the summer camp, on the shores of Washington’s Spirit Lake, via boat. On the other side, he piled up some of his sculptures at the landing and curious onlookers asked how much they cost. Armstrong tossed out a wild price, according to the book, and it took. He had his first sale, and a big glowing bulb over his head.
Armstrong moved to Sisters in 1974 and gradually caught people’s attention by carving elaborate animal forms from solid logs, such as eagles, horses and otters, and occasionally, humans. He’s now a Central Oregon legend, whose pieces are found in museums as well in the collections of millionaires and celebrities, such as Clint Eastwood, Burt Reynolds, Michael Jackson and Herb Alpert, according to Armstrong.
Locally, Armstong’s work is ubiquitous, from the stunning double doors at the Broken Top Clubhouse in Bend to the 34 saints, each representing the patron saints of a Catholic parish in Eastern Oregon, carved into wooden pillars in the garden of St. Edward the Martyr Catholic Church in Sisters. He is also represented by the High Desert Gallery in Sisters.
The center of it all was his studio. It was maybe 500 square feet, guessed Armstrong, but it was where he carved thousands of sculptures. And where he kept all his tools.
“My business is all about tools,” said Armstrong. “It’s also about art and inspiration, but tools allow you to create.”
Armstrong mostly works in walnut, his favorite wood, and uses chain saws to first “rough out” a sculpture. Then come die grinders — “my pencil” — for detail work, as well as chisels, routers and sanders.
So, after learning of the fire, Armstrong sulked back from Portland. Before the day ended, he already had been to the Harbor Freight hardware store in Bend. He needed tools.
Rebuilding
There was a brief moment of exasperation when he learned of the fire, but Armstrong knew he would rebuild. Losing sentimental items, such as the first sculpture he created, which he had given to his dad as a young man, was tough. But Armstrong didn’t lose his drive to create.
“The important thing is the creative energy is still there,” he said. “Tools are replaceable.”
The natural choice for a new studio was his property. He decided to turn an existing open-air barn into a combination studio, workshop and showroom, and is in the process of finishing it. Hay-bale walls were built to enclose it, and the doors are large enough to allow access for his forklift.
As for the actual carving work, that is still done outside. Armstrong has an open-sided enclosure on the building’s southwest corner that is ankle-deep in sawdust and littered with bits of wood.
In fact, the whole of the property is littered with stuff, although Armstrong might not prefer the description. He sees value in things that were likely discarded or discounted before they arrived.
Take, for example, the vehicles. There is a boom truck (for unloading logs from trucks), an old Jaguar, an ’80s-model Ford 350 pickup, a camper and a sailboat of questionable seaworthiness.
Armstrong has his own lumber yard behind the barn, full of random stacks of milled lumber. There are also stacks of assorted windows: “The great thing was I didn’t have to buy any windows (for the remodel).”
There is a sweat lodge. Away from the main house is a weathered hot tub, perched on a giant mound. A second building houses a cabinet shop, as well as an art studio on the top floor.
It’s also where Armstrong keeps the feed for his trout, who live in a roughly 100-foot-wide pond between the two buildings.
Dogs mill about, as do carpenters and apprentices.
And there is stuff, everywhere, leaning against buildings or lying in the dirt and duff, like a heavy 6-foot peavey (for maneuvering logs) and a pizza rack, still with a faded “Free” sign attached. And wood. Everywhere.
There are also sculptures in various stages of completion. When The Bulletin visited, Armstrong was roughing out a herd of elk in a 3-foot-wide, 8-foot-long section of ponderosa pine destined to be a fireplace mantle.
The wood for it was logged on Armstrong’s property. During last year’s Tollgate Fire, Armstrong felled several trees close to his house to create defensible space. The trunk of one is now a sap-encrusted mermaid.
There is also a stunning, 6-foot-high sculpture of two rearing stallions, sitting on a trailer with melted reflective lights. Both came from the old studio, although they were 20 feet away from the structure.
The fire was so hot, it cooked the side of the sculpture facing it, said Armstrong. Nevertheless, he buffed out the charring and refinished it. During the Sisters Rodeo parade earlier this month in downtown Sisters, Armstrong towed it behind his 1960 Austin-Healey, in a gesture of triumph, he said.
“Thought we had to honor up this guy,” said Armstrong.
Aftermath
Armstrong is rising from the ashes, like the mythical phoenix. He attributes it to a desire to forge ahead and to support from friends and community.
“Within four months of that epic disaster, I was up and running again, which is a testament to creative energy, fortitude and good friends,” said Armstrong. “I didn’t quit.”
Surviving a fire, said Armstrong, “It’s a transformational moment. It’s pretty devastating. It takes unbelievable amounts of energy to keep the ball rolling.”
The secret, said Armstrong, it to accept fate. And age helped. If he were 30, Armstrong doesn’t imagine he would have been able to muster the courage to start anew.
“At 58, you’ve got life wisdom,” said Armstrong. “You’ve created from nothing before and you can bust out a new world. But once is enough.”
“The initial devastation is overwhelming, but then you have to go a different direction. It’s like the universe is talking to you. You have to use it as a springboard for change, turn it into a positive and live with the excitement of the new. As long as we can go forward, there is no loss.”
And forward it is. Armstrong would like to turn his compound into an artists’ retreat, where painters, woodcarvers and sculptors could live and work. His own studio, he plans to keep open every day, with its attached showroom, and he plans on turning out work. Next up is a series of phoenixes for a client in Telluride, Colo., whose unfinished commissions were destroyed in the studio fire.
“The phoenix image is great. I think that image will be pretty important,” said Armstrong of the motif.
With a smile and his hair flecked with sawdust, Armstrong quips: “Eagles are out, phoenixes are in.”
‘Skip’ Armstrong: the man behind the ‘Cutting Edge’ chainsaw
Posted on November 9, 2016 by Krista Ledbetter • 1 Comment
‘Skip’ Armstrong: the man behind the ‘Cutting Edge’ chainsaw
When my colleagues invited me to join them on a trip to Sisters in August, I admittedly knew very little about why I was going.
“Come meet Skip,” they said. “We’re featuring him in our next campaign.”
Skip, I wondered. Who is Skip?
Here is what I knew: Skip carves sculptures with a chainsaw.
Okay, sure, that seemed neat enough. I grew up in Wisconsin. We’ve got trees and artists and sculptures carved from tree trunks. I’d go check out this Skip guy in Sisters.
On the drive to his place, I began to learn more. He once completed a massive display of the Mayan creation myth and the Day of the Dead in a five-paneled, 3,000-pound work of art now hanging in the restaurant at the ARIA Resort & Casino in Las Vegas.
Well, I’d never seen that kind of work in Wisconsin. The intrigue grew.
The drive to his place took us off the main roads, onto dirt roads, and into the wilderness outside of Sisters. His property was exactly what I’d have imagined for a wood-carving artist in the forests of Central Oregon – expansive, secluded, wooded, and peppered with sheds and work buildings. In the distance we heard the roar of a chainsaw and we were promptly greeted by a barking, yet tail-wagging, dog.
We were either about to be amazed or about to be involved in another “Blair Witch Project” sequel. Thankfully it was very, very much the former.
J. Chester “Skip” Armstrong, a man in his late sixties, stood before us, covered head to toe in sawdust, his work jumper unzipped and hanging loose, and – of all footwear – a pair of Crocs protecting his feet. An iPhone looked out of place in our surroundings as it peeked from his front pocket, and before him stood a rough, but incredible start of a sculpture he’d been roughing out with a chainsaw when we arrived.
My jaw was already on the ground. This guy was cool.
Skip is a chainsaw sculptor who, in his 40-year career, has created pieces that now exist in museums as well as in the collections of millionaires and celebrities, like Clint Eastwood, Michael Jackson, and Burt Reynolds. Not to mention that piece in the ARIA’s restaurant.
That day on his property, as we tip-toed with fascination around logs, through sawdust, and among sculptures, he told us how his now-legendary sculpting career came to be.
The answer? YMCA summer camp.
His desire to teach kids about woodcarving put a chainsaw in his hand while serving as program director for a camp outside Portland. The rest, as they say, is history.
And there I stood, 40 years later, before a wood-carved stampede of horses with expressions on their faces and taut muscles as realistic as any horse I’d seen in real life.
And he did this with a chainsaw. Not only with a chainsaw, I learned, but he carves freehand. He simply envisions his art in the wood he’s chosen, grabs his chainsaw, and begins to cut.
“But how?” I probably asked him nine times that day. But the question from Skip is how else would he do it?
To work from his own vision in his mind allows him to see it fully – three-dimensionally. He can envision the curves and angles, and the result can be fluid, ever-changing as he carves. He doesn’t have that freedom with a sketch.
I’m still mind-blown, but who am I to question the artist?
His work begins as a rough carving before a smaller chainsaw is used for finer details. In the end, each piece is smoothed with a sanding tool and given finishing touches. And, in my opinion, each piece is phenomenal.
It’s been more than two months since meeting Skip and witnessing his craft firsthand, and I still find myself fascinated by his skills. If you’re not familiar with him, take the time to look up his work.
And keep an eye out because you’ll be seeing his face around BendBroadband for a while.
World renowned wood sculptor J. Chester “Skip” Armstrong’s roots run deep in Central Oregon, his chosen home
He was born and raised in Berkeley, California, attended U.C. Berkeley in the 1960s and graduated with a degree in poetic theory and philosophy. In the early ’70s, after traveling through Central America and a brief stay in Vermont, he came north to Oregon looking for “untracked spaces,” where the stars are not drowned out by city lights.
For the past thirty-five years he has lived outside the little town of Sisters, Oregon. Skip lives with his wife, singer-songwriter, Anastacia, in the shadow of the Three Sisters Mountains, on twenty acres at the edge of the wilderness… his inspiration. To quote Chief Seattle, “The further we get from the forest floor, the less human we become; I would rather live in the middle of nowhere than any city on earth.”
Armstrong is a self-taught artist with a “can do attitude.” He helped run a YMCA camp at Spirit Lake, Washington, in the early ’70s before Mt. St. Helen blew, and wanted to introduce the campers to Native American North West totem poles and masks. He couldn’t find anyone to teach the class so took on the role of teacher himself and found he had a natural gift for shape and proportions.
Skip says, “I can ‘see’ the forms in the raw logs. It’s like Michelangelo says, “Just take away everything that doesn’t look like ‘nine horses running.'” For the last forty years, chainsaws, grinders, and chisels in hand Armstrong has done just that. “I’m hooked on wood sculpture.”
Out of local Oregon woods — juniper, maple, pine, and walnut — Armstrong carves the world he sees surrounding him. Eagles, osprey, wolves, cougars, coyotes howling at the moon, herons perched majestically at the river’s edge. It’s all the magic of life.
“This is what moves me. This, and the wild herds of mustangs that inhabit the west of my imagination.” He is best known for his horses, thundering herds all moving rhythmically as one.
Armstrong’s artistic style can be described as, “slightly stylized realism,” where the grace and rhythm of the sculpture’s outline or silhouette takes precedence over anatomical accuracy. Although his horses “look like horses” he says, “the art of sculpture is not to recreate the world verbatim but to interpret it.” His sculptures are charged with movement and emotion.
“I carve to reawaken the soul of the viewer to the primal energy and life force of earth-based imagery. My sculptures move in the rhythm of circles, spirals, and flowing lines dictated as much by the grain lines of the wood itself as by my own sense of the harmony of the natural world.”
Wood sculpture, like stone sculpture, is a subtractive process. You take away to reveal the form within. It is arduous and demanding and combines both artistic inspiration and physical perspiration. It is yielding but not forgiving. It does not allow for mistakes. But wood is organic, warm and alive and creates a “one of a kind” piece of art that traces its beginnings back to the living tree blown by the wind and fed by the sun and waters of the earth. Today, more than ever, we need to revere the natural world.
“My wood sculpture is the water that quenches that thirst.” It is the touching and being touched by the spirit of the Earth.
Reference
- Signature Gallery - J. Chester Armstrong
- Rising from the ashes: Sisters artist Skip Armstrong rebuilds after tragic studio fire by Andrew Moore
- ‘Skip’ Armstrong: the man behind the ‘Cutting Edge’ chainsaw
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Artists at Pickens Museum
- J. Chester Armstrong
- Bryant Baker
- Jolene Bird
- Robin Bray
- Barbara Chase Riboud
- Sergey Chernomorets
- Charles Cordier
- Jo Davidson
- Andrew Scott DeJesse
- Donald De Lue
- Roger Disney
- Yatika Starr Fields
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- Rockwell Kent
- William Kilpatrick
- Tom Lea
- Becky Mannschreck
- John Manship
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- Raoul Middleman
- Woodrow Nash
- Ed Natiya
- Clyde Otipoby
- Gene Pearson
- Pablo Picasso
- Daniel Pickens
- Erika Pochybova
- Charles Pratt
- Bill Rabbit
- Traci Rabbit
- Tanya Rafael
- Richard Recchia
- Faith Ringgold
- Josué Sánchez
- Fritz Scholder
- Stephen Schwark
- Isaac Shari
- Ralph Steadman
- Scott Storm
- Albert Wein
- C J Wells
Articles about Pickens Museum
2022
- Pickens Learning Commons Opens at NOC Tonkawa
- Pickens Museum Acquires "War Club" by Yatika Starr Fields January 20, 2022
2021
- Pickens Museum/NOC Mural Dedication Set for June 16th
- Yatika Starr Fields Completes Mural for Pickens Museum May 12, 2021
- Pickens Museum and NOC Announce Mural by Osage Artist Yatika Starr Fields May 5, 2021
- Osage Warrior in the Enemy Camp (Counting Coup) by John Free March 29, 2021
- Pickens Museum Displays Route 66 Murals by Robert Hardee March 29, 2021
- Pickens Museum Opens Exhibit of Sculpture by Donald De Lue at NOC March 24, 2021
- Pickens Museum partners with NOC February 23, 2021
2020
- Three Faces of the Pioneer Woman February 21, 2020
- Letter from a Birmingham Jail by Faith Ringgold February 21, 2020
- Exhibition: "Winter in New York" January 22, 2020
2019
2018
- The Turquoise Guitar by Jolene Bird November 26, 2018
- World's Largest Naja August 29, 2018
- A 1949 Hudson Limousine August 29, 2018
- Meet the Museum Design Team May 21, 2018
- A Ponca City Mystery April 5, 2018
- Tonya Rafael Visits Ponca City February 2018
2015 and before
- Sculptor Bryant Baker's Lost Masterpiece November 3, 2015
- Pioneer Woman Models Come Home February 26, 2010
- Pioneer Woman Models Should Return to Ponca City July 13, 2007
About Pickens Museum
Contact
hughpickens@gmail.com