Gilman artist carves a niche with wooden statues
Every so often you come across something that immediately grabs your attention. Maybe it’s unconventional, or uncommon, and it fills you with curiosity. You have more questions than you have answers, and you want more.
This was the case in January when The Star News ran a picture of Freya, a massive dragon who holds court on Hwy 64 near Gilman.
There were multiple calls from residents all over the county wondering where Freya lives, and who could have possibly dreamed her and brought her to life. People wanted to know how she got there, where she came from, and where they could find others like her.
Freya was born from the heart and soul of Leesa Syryczuk, artist and Gilman native. Leesa spent over 300 hours bringing Freya to life. Crafted from three chunks of white pine and held firmly together with wooden dowels and enough gorilla glue to laminate an actual dragon, each inch of Freya was developed by hand. Freya has 74 teeth and is made up of over 180 pieces. Leesa applied 11 coats of paint to the dragon, layering greens and reds and blues and multiple coverings of glitter to give Freya an iridescence that is unexpected of a chainsaw carving.
And just as Freya is multi-faceted and unique, so is her creator.
Leesa was born to the Syryczuk homestead and attended Gilman schools. She started her carving journey later in life after seeing someone else’s carvings and thinking, “Maybe I could do that.” She picked up her saw but admits that it took some time for it to all come together.
“I made a lot of firewood,” Leesa joked of her first few years. “You would not imagine how many bonfires I had.”
She started with frogs and mushrooms, getting her bearings with a few less complicated designs before working her way up to dogs, bears and eagles.
“I had one bear that started out at six feet [tall] and ended up at three feet,” she laughed.
Leesa has never been the kind of woman to call it quits after a few bumps in the road, so she kept going and eventually her work began to transform. Leesa has brought dozens of creations to life since she first began.
Her more recent pieces involve multiple parts, like her tribute to servicemen and women which includes a police officer, a firefighter and a paramedic circling a bald eagle and an American flag. Leesa also perfected the creation of made-to-order signs, using a small rotary tool to get the tiniest of details just right. Her benches are unique, not just because of their individuality, but because of their comfort as Leesa has taken care to get the seating at just the perfect angle for optimal satisfaction.
On top of her local art, Leesa has pieces in New York, Maryland, Ohio, Minnesota, Iowa, South Dakota, Colorado, California, Texas, Michigan, Illinois, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Tennessee, and even Chochołów, Poland, where she made friends with a local wood artist and charmed him so much that he put a chainsaw in her hands. After Leesa quickly whipped up a welcome sign in Polish, he declared that he would hire her on the spot.
She even had a piece displayed in the Pentagon for three weeks.
Leesa approaches each carving by sketching out a rough design after seeing a picture that’s inspired her or plucking an image from her head. She spends time finding just the right pieces of wood, letting each stump and log decide where they would best fit. Whether it’s the head of a mouse or the tail of a dragon, Leesa can look at a log and see exactly where it belongs.
“There’s a lot of playing with the grain,” she said. “It has to make sense in my head.”
Despite this natural gift, Leesa has never let her talent get the best of her. Always down-to-earth, Leesa has an “it is what it is” attitude, seeing the world and people exactly as they are and accepting both as is. She has a quiet sense of grit and confidence that comes through in her art. Her pieces stand tall and proud; they aren’t perfect, and they don’t pretend to be, but they’re teeming with character, beauty, and strength. Each piece proudly declares, “I am the way I am, take me or leave me.”
“Whether it’s covered in sawdust or wearing a skirt, I am who I am,” said Leesa.
And after all of this, Leesa gives some of her pieces away without asking for anything in return. She downplays her abilities and jokes that its just “fancy firewood.”
“I manufacture sawdust,” Leesa said. “I think the smell of sawdust and two-cycle should be a candle scent.”
But the hundreds of hours of physical labor, the mental workload of the design and layout, and the attention to each subtle detail do not necessarily translate into dollar signs to Leesa. She jokes that she’s cheap and shrugs off the thought of her selflessness as she methodically straps a massive carving to the bed of a pickup truck and drives it across the county to gift it to a veteran.
Sure, Leesa. We’ll let this one slide. Thankfully, she isn’t anywhere near finished. Keep your eyes peeled for her next project. The four-legged, mythical and winged creature is sure to be just as complex and singular as its maker.
