Bruce Dickens, left, and Ken Allen III stand atop their view improvement project at Kentuck Golf Course Thursday afternoon. The course wanted to cut down a few trees near the first tee and clubhouse to improve the view of the course and Coos Bay in the background. Instead of taking out the remaining stumps, an employee suggested the stumps be carved into the shapes of mushrooms. World Photo by Lou Sennick

Two clusters of giant wooden mushrooms pop into view as visitors and residents drive by Kentuck Golf Course off East Bay Drive. The tan- and gold-colored sculptures are the artistic makeovers of tree stumps transformed into fungi for fun by two local artists who enjoy making people happy.

With job skills from opposite spectrums of the natural environment - logging Oregon's tall timber and harvesting mushrooms from the forest's floor, North Bend artists Bruce Dickens, 44, and Ken Allen III, 34, have combined their talents to produce the newly sprouted mushroom sculptures for the sheer joy of the job.

Carved with nothing more than a chain saw, Dickens' and Allen's wooden sculptures represent two different varieties of mushrooms, complete with fanciful swirled stems and smooth, as well as realistic caps complete with bruised and mottled surfaces. "The Erosculators," a makeover of a myrtlewood stump, and a cedar-oriented work simply known as "The Round Ones" comprise the artists' joint creation at Coos Bay's Kentuck Golf Course.

Kentuck's Manager Joanne Culp said she is pleased with the improved view of the course greens and nearby blue waters of Coos Bay, thanks to the cleared hillside that features the mushrooms directly below the clubhouse

"A lot of visitors have come up and taken pictures of the mushrooms," Culp said.

"When you take something ugly like a tree stump and make something beautiful for people to enjoy - especially at a golf course - it's a golden opportunity," noted Allen.

His artistic touches of realism in the mushroom sculptures stem from Allen's work gathering mushrooms for profit.

"When you pick mushrooms, you dance with the forest," Allen said, noting the pleasure he finds in his intimate work within nature.

However, wood carving with a chain saw can be anything but pleasant.

"You got to be willing to eat a lot of chips," said fellow artist, Dickens, a stout and tanned, short-haired lifetime logger.

Standing precariously atop one of the hood-shaped caps of what he calls "rugged-enough-to-stand-on fine art" mushrooms, Dickens said he tried his hand at wood sculpting after he viewed a co-worker sawing leftover tree cuttings into art.

Dickens' first attempts at chain saw carving resulted in flamingo-sized birds, one of which perches in Culp's flower garden on the hillside above the wooden mushrooms.

"The birds, and now the mushrooms, are the only (whole) sculptures I've ever carved," said Dickens.

He indicated that through repeated requests for his birds from the golf course owners and their friends, his artistic chain saw practice has paid off. Dickens said he also has been successful in selling his relief carvings known as "knot-heads," which are on display at The Art of Wood in North Bend.

It's the mushroom sculptures that have made a positive impact on the golfers and anybody who sees them, and that has left Dickens and Allen sharing smiles.