ON LEINSTER ROAD in Rathmines, Co Dublin, five wooden sculptures now line the path. 

They were designed and created by Will Fogarty, a chainsaw wood carver from Co Limerick, and were instated on the road on Wednesday morning. 

The five sculptures are inspired by local wildlife: a buzzard, an otter, an owl, a fox, and a pair of squirrels are all standing spaced out just in from the footpath. They have been painstakingly carved from several trees the local council had cut down due to overgrowth.

Fogarty had begun the process of creating the sculptures earlier this summer after Dublin City Council contacted him to see if he could turn the logs into artwork to liven up the road. He visited the site to examine the area and took the commission.

“If somebody’s asked me to come and carve something and they don’t really know what they want, I’ll always try and lead them down the local wildlife route,” he told The Journal. “That’s what I love carving – I love nature. I would love carving things like owls, foxes, hares, that kind of thing. So that’s what we agreed then, to do some local wildlife that you could find in the Rathmines area.”

The five sculptures. Will Fogarty Will Fogarty

The logs were brought back to Fogarty’s home in rural Co Limerick where he does most of his work, if not on site. Over the next six to eight weeks, alongside his other projects, he worked on the sculptures: carving them, treating them with a blowtorch, colouring them, and giving them several coats of oil.

Once the sculptures were finished, they spent some time in Fogarty’s yard before he had the time to load them up in the back of a trailer and escort them up to their home in Dublin. The sculptures can weigh up to a “couple hundred” kg, he said. 

Once he arrived in Dublin, a few council workers gave him a hand with installing them along the road, where the trees they once were stood.

“It’s nice that they’ve gone, but I’m also missing them from the front of the house as well,” he said.

While there has been an overwhelmingly positive reaction to the wooden creatures, Fogarty added that some people have expressed concern at live trees being chopped down to facilitate this – which he stressed was not a decision taken lightly by the council and had followed the trees growing too close to boundary walls, causing some structural issues.

The carvings had come as a way to “honour the memory of the trees that were removed”, Dublin City Council said in a post to Instagram.

Three of the sculptures earlier in the process. Will Fogarty Will Fogarty

Fogarty, whose background is in construction, stumbled across chainsaw wood carving after the crash when he was out of work. Over the years, he has mastered his craft and his work can be viewed in parks and sites across the country.

“I’ve travelled all over the country doing this, working in people’s gardens, working in public parks. I really do love that side of it, because you get a chance to meet people who generally are very interested in what you do – and most of them wouldn’t be aware of the idea that you can carve a tree with a chainsaw.

“So it’s nice to chat to people and discuss stuff like that. It’s just been amazing journey, really. I’ve been very lucky.”