CURRAN – Where most people would see a giant log, Curran wood carver Jordan Luebben sees a potential cigar store Indian, zombie, cowboy or other life-like carving creation.

The 2001 graduate of Alcona High School has been working his art abilities and carves the sculptures at his Curran home in the backyard using various types of chain saws, hand tools and other items.

Curran is the Black Bear Capital of Michigan, and there are not a shortage of carved bears in the community (in fact Luebben is working with Mitchell Township to carve bears for a children’s park) but it’s not bears Luebben is interested in working on mostly.

“My specialty is life-like people,” he said. “There are a lot of people that do bears, but I can’t do them well, but I can just look at wood and carve a person out of it.”

Luebben said he was first introduced to wood carving by his father Rolland Luebben, who does chain saw art. But working with wood did not originally pique his interest.

He was more into doing art projects in high school, including the creation of a six-foot metal robot that won an annual art competition in Alpena.

But it was through his dad that he did begin to work with woods, working to help his father sand and finish some of the bear carvings.

“He had his own way to do it and I think all the thoughts stuck in my head,” he said. “How they could be made better and when I finally gave it a try I applied all that thinking.”

When Luebben finally took his hand to carving he needed some extra money and took on a project to carve a life size Detroit Tigers player out of wood.

And although Luebben admitted that he could have done better on his first project, the client loved the baseball player and ordered a whole team.

Luebben’s business and skill grew and now he considers himself a corporate carver, doing jobs for businesses, including a Michigan theme park.

He also credits getting into the profession with straightening out his life.

“I would say my son Noah was my biggest inspiration,” he said. “He’s the fuel behind it. Before I didn’t take life seriously, I have to do something and I am going to make an imprint on this kid.”

He also derived much of his inspiration from a wood carver named Jerry Wagner. Many of Wagner’s pieces were in the Luebben family home over the years and he grew up looking at them.

Wagner’s expertise was the classic cigar store Indian, which was placed in front of cigar stores to let people know people are selling cigars at the location.

According to Luebben, Wagner specialized in hand tools, and he is trying to incorporate a lot of his own carving using those.

“That means I have to unlearn some of the things I do with chain saws,” he said.

Luebben’s art can be seen by visiting chainsawd.com.

Jason Ogden can be reached via email at jogden@thealpenanews.com or by phone at 358-5693. Follow Jason on Twitter @jo_alpenanews. Read his blog, Sunny side up, with Jason at www.thealpenanews.com.