I Didn’t Know Wood Could Do This (10 Photos vol. 2)

October 27, 2026

By Vidar

Carved, woven and stacked

A hand reaches out of the stump of what was once the tallest tree in Wales. A troll in Iowa hugs a tree in a pot. Five wooden arches cross a river in Japan, and a temple of timber rises in the Nevada desert only to be burned. Ten more works that show what wood can do.

More: I Didn’t Know Wood Could Do This (10 Photos)

🌲 Helmut — By Thomas Dambo in Clinton, Iowa, USA 🇺🇸

Helmut stands near The Sawmill Museum hugging a tub with a living tree that rises high above his head; the visitor in front of him gives the scale. He is the middle of three troll brothers in Dambo’s The Tree Thieves.

💡 Story Fact: The trolls are built from reclaimed wood, and in the story this town’s sawmills once cut down the forest they slept in. In Dambo’s poem for the project, the oldest brother is Warren, then Helmut, then Marwin. Marwin was in part one of this series.

More: Three Giant Trolls Followed Their Stolen Trees to Iowa (8 Photos)

🔗 Follow Thomas Dambo on Instagram

📷 Image: Thomas Dambo

🌊 Face in the Driftwood — By Debra Bernier of Vancouver Island, Canada 🇨🇦

A sleeping face sits inside a curl of wood that the sea has already shaped. Debra Bernier carves into driftwood and adds clay and shells, keeping the grain and cracks the water left.

More: 19 Driftwood Sculptures by Debra Bernier

🔗 Follow Debra Bernier on Instagram

✋ “The Giant Hand of Vyrnwy” — By Simon O’Rourke at Lake Vyrnwy, Wales, UK 🇬🇧

This Douglas fir was the tallest tree in Wales, 63.7 meters (208.9 ft) tall, until storms damaged it and it was felled in 2011. Chainsaw artist Simon O’Rourke carved the tall stump that was left into a giant hand.

💡 Carving Fact: To O’Rourke, the hand is “the tree’s last attempt to reach for the sky”. The trunk was not wide enough for a whole hand, so he added two pieces for the thumb and little finger. Putting up the scaffold on the steep ground took two days; the carving took six.

More: From Tallest Tree to Towering Sculpture: The Giant Hand of the UK

🔗 Visit Simon O’Rourke’s website

📷 Image: Simon O’Rourke

🗿 “Ikala Nawan” — By Peter Wolf Toth in Astoria, Oregon, USA 🇺🇸

This 18-foot cedar face stands near the Youngs Bay Bridge in Astoria. It is one of Hungarian-born Peter Wolf Toth’s Whispering Giants. Toth carves them with hammer and chisel as portraits of Native American people and talks with local tribes before he starts.

💡 Road Trip Fact: Toth set out to place at least one in every U.S. state and reached all 50 in 1988, with a carving in Hawaii.

📷 Photo: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, photograph by Carol M. Highsmith, LC-DIG-highsm-50547 (public domain)

🐻 Dahl’s Chainsaw Art — Keystone, South Dakota, USA 🇺🇸

A bear waves from the Welcome sign, an eagle stands guard and a log arch announces the World’s Largest Bigfoot. Every figure in this yard in Keystone, a small town by Mount Rushmore, was cut with chainsaws of various sizes.

📷 Photo: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, photograph by Carol M. Highsmith, LC-DIG-highsm-69178 (public domain)

🔥 “Galaxia” — By Arthur Mamou-Mani at Burning Man, Nevada, USA 🇺🇸

The 2018 Temple at Burning Man was built from 20 timber trusses that spiral up toward one point in the sky. Architect Arthur Mamou-Mani’s team built it in Reno and Oakland and raised it in the Black Rock Desert.

💡 Fire Fact: Traditionally, the Temple is burned on the final night of the event, the night after the Man burns.

🔗 Visit Mamou-Mani’s website

📷 Photo: BLM Nevada / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

🌀 “O Say Can You See” — By Patrick Dougherty in Washington, D.C., USA 🇺🇸

Nothing here is carved: the walls are thousands of saplings bent and woven into rooms you can walk through. Patrick Dougherty made it for the U.S. Botanic Garden’s 200th anniversary, with Norway maple, Siberian elm and cherry saplings harvested from invasive plants in the area, plus farm-grown willow.

💡 Build Fact: Volunteers and garden staff worked more than 200 shifts with Dougherty’s team over three weeks in October 2019.

🔗 Visit Patrick Dougherty’s website

📷 Photo: Dragon Librarian / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

⛪ Church of the Transfiguration — Kizhi Island, Russia 🇷🇺

Twenty-two wooden domes climb the Church of the Transfiguration on an island in Lake Onega, with the nine-dome Church of the Intercession on the left. The scaffolding in this 2016 photo is part of a long restoration.

💡 Heritage Fact: The Transfiguration church was built in 1714 from pine logs joined without nails, apart from the domes and roof shingles. The two churches and the octagonal bell tower beside them, added in 1862, became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1990.

📷 Photo: Alexxx1979 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

🛕 Sanctuary of Truth — Pattaya, Thailand 🇹🇭

This seaside temple is built entirely of wood, and every figure on it is carved by hand. Businessman Lek Viriyaphan started it in 1981, and the work is still going on; visitors tour it in hard hats.

💡 Size Fact: Its tallest spire reaches 105 meters (344 ft).

📷 Photo: Rolf Heinrich / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)

🌉 Kintai Bridge — Iwakuni, Japan 🇯🇵

Five wooden arches cross the Nishiki River on stone piers. The first Kintai Bridge was built in 1673; after a 1950 flood washed it away, it was rebuilt in 1953 to match the original.

💡 Typhoon Fact: The 1950 flood came with Typhoon Kijia. On September 14, townspeople chanted “save the bridge” in the storm, but it was washed away at 9:40 a.m.

📷 Photo: Jakub Hałun / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)