Key points
Artist Alex Bieniecki creates a wooden sculpture of otters on waves.
The sculpture is carved from a dying bull pine tree at Lakehouse Tavern.
Bieniecki balances artistic passion with the need to support his young family.
The wooden sculpture, carved from a tree rooted in the ground, towered overhead, depicting several otters riding atop swells of waves. Water appeared to spout upward, carrying with it otters mid-leap, long tails curling behind them. Despite being motionless, the statue evoked liveliness.
Covered in tattoos and sawdust while standing beneath the former bull pine tree, Alex Bieniecki smoked a cigarette and bounced on his feet as he talked about his latest project.
“If you start doing it just for the money, you don’t love it, and the work shows. I love it all the way, and that shows,” he said.
Bieniecki and his friend-slash-helper, Shawn McCormack, found themselves at Lakehouse Tavern in Hopkinton on Tuesday morning. The restaurant commissioned Carver Alex, as he calls himself, to repurpose the dying tree into an on-site work of art featuring the restaurant’s mascot: otters. Tuesday marked day 18 of the endeavor.
Once Bieniecki and McCormack finish sanding between the surf, they will coat the sculpture with three layers of varnish. There’s a slot where a sign will slide in, advertising the tavern to passersby.
It’s a formidable task to work with such a large medium, but that’s the way Bieniecki prefers it.
“I like to do big, unique things. I like to work big. Not a lot of people want to deal with all the staging and whatever’s going on with the tree, and I like that. I thrive in that area,” said 44-year-old Bieniecki.
His first creation was a 10-foot-tall rendering of a horned tiki figure and a hunter holding the human heads of his victims, featuring skulls, teeth and a long tongue.
“I was just kind of messing around. It was fun,” said Bieniecki, who carved that statue while on a camping trip in his mid-twenties.
As a professional tattoo artist at the time, he was used to creating art at others’ requests, even if it clashed with his own vision.
“It’s always 18, 19-year-old kids coming in for the same silly stuff,” he said.
His love for tattooing began to wane. Carving provided an outlet for him to make what he wanted.
Originally, he had little faith that anyone would be interested in his artwork. In a world where people expect statues of bears, owls and eagles, Bieniecki preferred to carve demons, gargoyles and skulls.
“I was like, ‘Nobody’s gonna want my shit,’” he said.
But in 2014, he took some of his carvings to a festival in Vermont. He sold every single one.
“It was so vastly different from everything else people had there. I was like, ‘I guess I can do this,’” he said.
He brought his sculptures to several more fairs, where they were consistently popular. But Bieniecki has an “artist’s soul,” he said, and he grew bored.
“If you go to the fair, you’re the chainsaw guy at the fair. Grandma always wants a bear. You get another order for the next bear — it’s nothing against bears,” he said. “But I get caught in this cycle, where I’d really like to create something that I want to create from my soul, but I have to make a living.”
Now, with an 11-week-old son named Varek at home, he has to balance keeping his passion alive and supporting his family.
He still takes commissions, like the otters by the tavern. But he tries to resist commercial pressure in other ways. He lives in Wentworth and works from a studio tucked away on a dirt road far from any traffic, with no electricity.
“My business plan is terrible, business-wise. But as an artist, I get to do things that are different, and it makes me happy. I have a unique niche in this medium, and it’s very enjoyable,” he said. “I get depressed and I lose love for it if I do the same thing over and over again.”
That’s why he had originally walked away from tattooing to focus his energy on chainsaw carving. But his time as a tattoo artist equipped him with experience in several art styles from different cultures and religions.
In this particular project, he draws inspiration from Japanese-style tattooing for the waves beneath the otters.
“I love movement, three-dimensional figure eights — you can put that on any part of the body. We’re like trees, round everywhere,” he said.
For the first time since 2012, he returned to professional tattooing, this time from a shop in Rochester.
“I’m happy with it. I love it again,” he said. “It’s real fortunate to be a tattoo guy, you know. It all comes down to love — that’s really what it is.”
