Like smoke at a barbecue, the sawdust from the chain saw being used by Joe Stebbing seemed to follow me wherever I stood, as great clouds of pulverized tree erupting from his fuel-injected Stihl.

       “How do you keep the sawdust out of your mouth?” I shouted up at Stebbing, who was atop a scaffold erected around a tree in High Bridge Park in Bowie. “You don’t,” he said. Indeed. For days afterward, I was picking sawdust out of my camera bag and coat pockets.

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       Stebbing is a professional chain saw sculptor from Thurmont, Md., and this was his latest project, created at the behest of Stewart Seal. Seal works for the Maryland National Capital Park and Planning Commission. For the last six years he has been identifying dead or diseased trees throughout Prince George’s County and hiring carvers like Stebbing to transform them into art.

       Seal thought this particular stub, a topped oak tree that divided into two trunks about four feet off the ground, could be turned into a saxophone player.

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       “A saxophone player?” Stebbing had said when he and Seal perused the tree. “The body’s coming down here,” Seal said. “And the saxophone is over there.”

       Stebbing walked around the tree, taking it in. “Stewart, he likes to challenge me,” he said. “Heads, faces and hands, those are all hard for me. And this is going to have all those.”

       After assembling the scaffold, Stebbing had gotten to work, donning ear protectors and firing up his chain saw. “I have a couple ideas,” he said as he sliced off huge disks of wood.

       The inspiration for what Seal calls Art on the Trails came when he was walking through the woods with his dog. “A big tree had just fallen down,” he said. “I said to myself, somebody could carve that into the Loch Ness Monster.”

       Since then, about 50 trees, stumps and fallen logs all over the county have been carved. “There’s everything from a basic animal totem pole up to a two-headed dragon,” Seal said. “We have eagles on a golf course, a bear family on another golf course. There’s a great blue heron.”

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       A park in College Park features a massive hand, eight feet in diameter, carved from an ash tree. Because of the emerald ash borer, there are a fair amount of damaged ash trees available. “It’s done to enhance the park, to give you a shocking experience when you’re coming down the trail,” Seal said.

       Stebbing, 40, was a plumber for 14 years, then went to work at a furniture company in Frederick. The fancier pieces had a lot of detailed carving on them. “That got me into carving,” he said.

       Stebbing was hooked. He’d get logs from a tree service to practice on after work. Nine years ago, he ditched the day job and struck out as a wood artist. He carves a lot of pieces in the field, but does others in his workshop.

       “Last year I did an eight-foot Jesus, with his arms stretched out,” he said. “That one terrified me. I prayed. It turned out awesome.” Stebbing was sorry to see it go. “It was nice having Jesus in the shop for a few weeks,” he said.

       The benefit of a chain saw is that it removes a lot of material quickly. For the Bowie job, Stebbing had four of various sizes. “I usually start at the top and work my way down,” he said. “There’s a lot of figuring out. It’s not too much of a structured process.”

       I asked Stebbing if he ever came across irate squirrels while working. He said no. But he has tangled with snakes. One job involved carving a tree in the middle of a field into a pair of flying geese. Stebbing was on the scaffold, 15 feet up, when he made his first cut. A snake slithered out of the tree and down onto him. He kicked it to the ground and kept working.

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       He’s been stung by bees as well. The periodical cicadas last year were also a challenge. He’d find himself covered by the bugs. “It was just nasty,” he said. “I was hoping the exhaust from the chain saw would keep them away. It didn’t.”

       Four days after Stebbing made his first cut in High Bridge Park, he was done. He found the saxophone player inside the oak, trimming away wood until a natty musician in a frock coat and a pork pie hat emerged.