Eric Garcia makes art with the bluntest of tools: a chainsaw.
He’s carving a sculpture out of a 10-foot tree trunk outside Fire Station 12 in San Antonio Heights. Over the course of two weeks, the form of a firefighter has taken shape. Passersby have honked, waved, called out encouragingly and paused for selfies and questions.
“I’ve got the whole community watching me,” Garcia told me Monday morning, Oct. 7, as we spoke a few feet from his handiwork. “I feel very honored to do this for this fire station and for this community.”
The trunk was left over from an 80-foot redwood tree that was taken down in May 2018 due to age and disease. Lore has it that the tree was planted in the 1940s by the first paid firefighter at the then-new station, Capt. Andy Shipway told me.