Jim Roberts and his wife, Marilyn, had done all they could to save the 100-year-old oak tree in their Ashton Heights yard, but it was at the end of its life span. They made a phone call, and soon their daughters’ childhood friend Andrew Mallon was on their doorstep, chainsaw in hand.
The purpose of Mallon’s visit wasn’t to cut up the felled tree. Rather, it was to transform what was left of it—a 14-foot stump at the corner of North Pershing Drive and North Monroe Street—into a piece of art.
Into the wood, Mallon carved a smiling sun facing east and a crescent moon facing west. He completed it in the fall of 2022, right around the time he became a chainsaw art contestant on the Discovery reality TV show A Cut Above.
“It’s very inspirational,” Roberts, a retired attorney, says of the celestial totem that now accents his yard. Though he and his wife have lived in their home for 45 years, the design became a conversation piece that helped them get to know more of their neighbors. “People stop and we chat about it,” he says. “When Andrew was doing this sculpture, dozens of people would walk by and stop.”
Mallon, now 40, grew up in Ashton Heights, the second youngest of 10 children. His father worked for the federal government and his mother was a secretary at Randolph Elementary School. He was on the swim team with Roberts’ daughters.
In school, he struggled with dyslexia. He had a hard time sitting still, reading and writing. “It doesn’t come naturally to me. I’ve always had to work harder,” Mallon says. But he loved making things. “My parents brought home boxes and tape and scissors because I liked to create and build.”
In retrospect, he believes his learning differences had an upside. “I think it’s what makes me great at my job—like when somebody’s blind, they can hear better. When I can’t read the information…I break things down in my head in a different way than most people can. I find it to be a gift.”
After graduating from Washington-Lee High School (now Washington-Liberty), Mallon took carpentry classes at the Arlington Career Center and found work remodeling area homes. During downtimes, while waiting for materials to be delivered to a job site, he started carving small sculptures out of pencils.
“You’re up in the rafters and you’re kinda stuck there,” he says. “I would pull my pencil out from behind my ear, and my utility knife out of my pouch and start whittling.” He carved everything from women’s faces to Santa Claus. Next, he bought a carving knife.
“I very quickly realized that I had the ability to create anything I wanted,” he says. “The problem was that I found chisels and gouges too slow and too small. I needed it to happen faster. I could see [the design] in my head.”
One day, he saw a chainsaw artist on TV and thought, I can do this. I could be a chainsaw artist. In June 2012, he traveled to Ridgway, Pennsylvania, and took a chainsaw carving class, learning how to carve bears and owls. “I went home and cashed in my change jar, and I bought my first chainsaw,” he says.
Before then, he had only used a chainsaw a few times to cut tree limbs.
“I treated it just like any other tool,” he explains. “I understand tools. Once you know the rules and safety of them, it’s just about stretching the limits of what you can do with it.”
By then, Mallon was living in Falls Church. Setting up shop on his porch, he carved a pelican and gave it to his mother. Then he carved a rooster. In February 2013, he returned to Ridgway to attend the annual Chainsaw Carvers Rendezvous.
“I was nervous as could be,” he says, recalling how he dutifully wore safety gear, even though no one else did. “I looked like the new guy. My chainsaws were still shiny. I embarrassed myself and started making a name for myself at the same time.”
Continuing to work part time, he took to carving on the weekends. His first commission, in 2014, was “a simple bear hanging on a tree.” He went back and added a hawk and a fox for free. “It just bothered me so much that the top and bottom were blank.”
Now his art has become a full-time vocation. To date, he’s carved about 100 stump sculptures—roughly half of them in Arlington.
Mallon starts each project with 360 degrees of scaffolding around the tree stump, using a big saw to remove large chunks. Then he switches to a medium-size saw to bring the forms to life. A handful of smaller saws come in handy for fine details, textures and patterns.
Though his tool kit does include small grinders and sanders, “90% of the work is done with a chainsaw,” he says. Once the carving is finished, he burnishes the wood with a blowtorch to dry it out before sanding and sealing it, and to create contrast in the design. “It’s all one tone and then when I burn it, it gives it a different tone.”
Most pieces take four to five days to complete and cost between $3,000 and $5,000.
There is whimsy in his work. At the corner of Lincoln and Fifth streets, he carved a two-headed dragon for a family with young kids, adding a saddle to the beast and bringing the tail around to create a bench where the kids could sit while waiting for the school bus.
Mallon met his wife, Kristin Oswald (a Yorktown High School alumna), on the dance floor at Clarendon Grill in 2011. They married in 2015 and later moved to Winchester. They have two little girls, Lyra, 5, and Alana, 3.
After their eldest was born, Mallon carved a bear hugging a pine tree, painting the eyes blue to match his daughter’s. He followed up with a 3-foot-tall Sasquatch hugging an eagle. “Everything I carved that year was cute and snuggly,” he says. “[Parenthood] had an extreme impact on my work.”
Today, whenever he meets with a new client, he asks about their likes and dislikes. What gets them up in the morning? What would brighten their day when they look out the window?
For Arlington homeowner Michelle Krowl, a Civil War historian who curates Abraham Lincoln’s papers at the Library of Congress, the answer was America’s 16th president.
In March, Mallon sculpted a life-size statue of Lincoln outside Krowl’s home in Arlington Forest. She can see it from her dining room window.
“Andrew did such an amazing job,” she says. “I love that [he] was able to give [the tree] new life as a beautiful piece of art. It brings me joy every time I see it.”
Wendy Kantor is a writer based in Northern Virginia. To see more of Andrew Mallon’s work, visit amsculptures.com.