Chainsaw art isn’t for everybody. But when it is, it becomes an obsession. Just ask former Runaways lead singer Cherie Currie, who has been carving for the past two decades. Relatively a new art form—it has only been around since the 1950s—there aren’t many chainsaw artists (and even fewer women who carve) other than a handful of budget horror movie villains wielding gas-guzzling dismembering machines beginning with 1974’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Almost 23 years ago, the onetime corset-wearing teenage nymphet—who, along with her four equally fetching and feather-haired underage bandmates, kicked in rock’s glass ceiling in their sparkly platform shoes—found herself on the back of a motorcycle, speeding up the Pacific Coast Highway. As she scooted up the California coast, she wasn’t thinking about the multimillion-dollar beach properties to her left, or keeping her trademark platinum hair tucked under her helmet, wondering if her too-tight jeans were riding up, or whether she liked Shonen Knife’s cover of “Cherry Bomb.” Nope. Instead, she found herself suddenly transfixed by a cluster of wooden tikis, dolphins, and mermaids outside an art gallery as they approached Malibu’s infamous Kanan Road and a place called Malibu Mountain Gallery.

She didn’t ask her companion to stop to take a look at the carvings, but for the next two weeks, she didn’t think about much else. “I was on the back of a motorcycle—we were with a pack of other riders— and I just happened to glance over, and I saw these guys carving. I didn’t think about it immediately, but that little voice in my head would say to me every night before I went to bed, ‘You have to go back there!’ Every morning, when I got up, my little voice [in my head] would say, ‘You have to go back.’ It went on and on until I just said out loud: ‘I’ll go back!”’ Finally, she drove to the gallery on a weekday and approached the guy who looked like he owned the place. His name was Rio, and she told him, “I’d like to learn."

“First, let me see some of your artwork,” he demanded. “So,” she recalls, “I drove all the way home to get some. It was far—30 miles each way— but I grabbed my relief carvings, brought them to him, and he said, ‘Okay, let’s start tomorrow.’”

Within three days, Currie was wielding a chainsaw like a pro, without even a wobble. Scared? Not her. She'd met her hero David Bowie in Boston when she wasn’t even out of her teens, and with the Runaways she’d played sold-out stadiums in Japan—where they WERE the Beatles. Then, returning home, they opened up for Cheap Trick, Van Halen, Talking Heads, and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, then palled around with the Ramones, the Dead Boys, Generation X, and the Sex Pistols, before she left the band in 1977. Chainsaws? That is a piece of cake. Well, a hunk of wood. After she learned, she wanted to carve a castle as her first creation, but somehow it turned into a spinning seal. She left it at the gallery to cure, and when she came back for it, she found it was sold! (Something that still pains her.) Her third creation won a blue ribbon at the Malibu Art Expo, with more gongs to come over the next 22 years. She does exhibitions and art shows, and carved a wooden jean jacket for Levi’s at South by Southwest. As for her music, Currie has decided to wrap up her musical career on Nov. 1, 2025, three weeks before her 65th birthday, at L.A.’s infamous Whisky a Go Go. “It felt right since that’s where it all began,” she says simply.

That doesn’t mean she’s giving up anything else. Especially her art—she still gets thousands of requests, many from bereaved pet owners (“I don’t do them anymore. It just makes me too sad”) to people who want her naughty-looking bears, life-size mermaids, or the occasional totem pole. During the week, she’ll suit up in her chaps, put on her protective gear, crank up her favorite classic rock radio station loud, and, like a chainsaw Michelangelo, find her own David in a block of wood. Now you can do the same. Cherie Currie has agreed to teach us how to do our own chainsaw art. But with a warning: “It’s not for everybody. I mean, it is a calling, but it’s very dangerous. There’ve been carvers who’ve been at it for 30 years and still get hurt.” Very scary, Cherie. Take it away...

The first thing you need to do is find a good teacher and have them teach you how not to kill yourself with the saw. I found two: Rio deJarnett and Stacy Poitras from Malibu Mountain Gallery. Take a couple of lessons; you cannot do this alone. In my opinion, it’s unsafe. Your appendages are far more important than your desire to jump in. So many things can go wrong that you need to be smart about it. If you live in the mountains somewhere and you live by yourself and don’t care if the chainsaw hits you in the throat and bears eat you, then go for it. Otherwise, find a teacher.

1. You need to put your protective gear on. Gloves, goggles, tie your hair back, and put bandannas around your boots to keep out the sawdust.

2. Choose the right log for the project. The figure is inside the log, so choose carefully. The kind of wood you choose is very important, and Los Angeles is not a good place for wood. I'll drive up to Lake Arrowhead and get it from a guy up there. Redwood and cedar are my favorites. Elm is also a good wood. It’s a waxy wood and I like it.

3. You need to screw the log into the workstation so it doesn’t move.

4. Draw chalk marks on the wood so you know where the screws are when using the chainsaw. You don’t want to hit one of those, because it will destroy your chain.

5. Add gas and oil to the chainsaw and check it for safety before you start it up. Sometimes you need to check the spark plugs if it’s bogging. Bogging means it’s choking a bit. Then you need to switch out the spark plug. Cleaning the air filter is very important. Yes, I know it’s not a Corvette, but still...

6. Turn on the chainsaw. I can’t start it on the ground, I have my own method— I literally drop-start it. When I was competing in 2005,1 had carvers come up to me and say, “You’re just a showoff.” Of course I am, but not when I’m starting my saw. So start your saw the way you fucking want to!

At this stage, I’m peeling back the bark around the log to make it a clean working surface. I skin it because it’s easier to carve when it’s smooth. Sometimes you can get carried away with this step, but you do want to get as much of the bark off as you can.

7. Start to carve. The important thing is you have to get past the idea of two dimensions and be careful how much you take off, because you can’t put it back on. I never multitask because you need to really concentrate on what you’re doing. Sometimes my face is “this close” to the blade. When I’m signing an autograph or somebody’s talking to me, I turn off the blade. It’s dangerous. You need to shut out all distractions.

8. Doing Boy Howdy! was tricky because he’s got those spindly arms and then the big shoes. That doesn’t work that well in chainsaw carving because with wood you have to think of the grain, and the grain goes vertical, and keeping the integrity of the wood is paramount. I needed him to have more support, so I ended up using a notch that protmdes out. So now Boy Howdy! is sitting on a little square base so I could support those legs.

Use the grinder to sand the wood. After you’re happy with your cuts, it smooths everything out. Stay away from the nooks and crannies; you don’t want the grinder to go into your hand. Stacy Poitras (one of my mentors) says that the grinder is far more dangerous than the chainsaw, and he’s right.

9. Use the Dremel for fine detailing. It looks a little like a kitchen tool, and I have different bits for it. At this point take your time, just take those extra couple of minutes with the Dremel, rather than use tools that just gouge and destroy.

10. Seal the Boy Howdy! with a varnish and then let it dry. Because he’s Boy Howdy!, I’m priming him and painting him white. The whole process to carve him took about six hours.

Oh, before you ask: No, there will not be a Runaways reunion.