Bay Area pastor takes leap of faith, builds business around passion for art and trees
TAMPA, Fla. - A Bay Area pastor who spent his life cutting trees, but retired due to health issues, has resurrected his passion and turned it into a business.
Ray Gibbons and his wife run Inspired Creations, a woodcarving company.
As a master climber, Gibbons has been doing tree work his entire life. But, his health began to deteriorate due to high blood pressure from the stress and hard labor of the job.
Several years ago, he became a pastor and went to Georgia to go take care of a fellow pastor who was battling cancer.
While he was there, Gibbons had a lot of time on his hands and noticed a large, 100-foot-hundred tall pine tree. Gibbons wanted to do wood carving, so he started taking chunks out of the pine tree.
"I always wanted to do carvings so I started watching videos to learn how to do it. The next thing you know I was doing wood spirits and chain saw carvings and then I moved on to doing dremel creations and now I do it all," Gibbons said.
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He enjoys carving Viking and Western scenes and even carved a saltwater scene into a tree someone had in their yard. He is also a pastor so he depicts a lot of religious scenes and carves a lot of John 3:16.
"Doing tree work, I never had a chance to do it because you do tree work all day, and you’re tired because all you’re thinking about is going and cutting the next tree down over somebody’s roof. I don’t get as aggravated doing a wood spirit," he explained.
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Gibbons’ wife comes up with the artwork and draws it on the tree. Once it’s on there, he takes the dremel and starts digging it in.
"When I was in Georgia, I started selling chainsaw carvings and started liking them and when I got here and started doing dremel and people started buying them and it just evolved into it. There’s no better feeling than that. When someone really likes what you’ve done. It’s always better when you can give respect to something that’s been there for 100 years. I love doing this because I’m allowed to keep working with trees and wood and chainsaws and dremel, but I’m allowed to create something people to look at that will probably be here longer than I will."