Leo Parent takes a hand torch to the top of a large wooden mushroom, and the smoke puffs up, gray and fragrant. The torching technique is called shou sugi ban, Parent explains. It’s a western interpretation of yakisugi, a traditional Japanese drying and burning method used to preserve cypress planks for cladding.
Parent has been carving mushrooms out of windfallen logs since 2020, when they began to roam Truro’s forests in search of a hands-on project. In their workshop in the Truro Tradesmen’s Park, fire is used to finish the smooth, sculpted mushrooms.
When Parent first started carving mushrooms, they thought that the sculptures would go outside. They had planned on applying durable finishes for that reason. “But people want them inside,” they say. Several of the mushrooms reside in the Mary Heaton Vorse house, where Parent worked as a chef during the pandemic.
Parent, who was born in Glastonbury, Conn., says they’ve always worked with their hands: farming, cooking, and doing renovation work. They learned handyman skills from their father, who worked at Pratt & Whitney, the aircraft manufacturer in East Hartford. “He started there building engines for planes,” they say, and ended up leading the machinists’ union.
Parent didn’t go to college. In 1995, they visited Provincetown for the summer. “Never left,” they say. But they did take a break to attend a massage school in East Hampton, N.Y., graduating in 2014.
They spent two years as a massage therapist. “I’ve always been interested in the healing arts,” Parent says. And that is where their interest in mushrooms is rooted: “I love them aesthetically, and I love their health-giving qualities.” They eat mushrooms — not psychedelic ones but varieties some people believe have medicinal value, like turkey tail and reishi, which can be found in local forests.
Parent lives at the Adventure Bound Camping Resort in North Truro for most of the year but spends three winter months in Provincetown. In 2020, while working on the landscape with a chain saw, they noticed rotting wood on the ground: thick logs, ripe for refurbishment. Armed with fluency in craftsmanship, Parent took the chain saw to the logs and started carving.
More than a dozen wooden mushrooms sit on tables and stools in Parent’s workshop, carved from oak and maple and cedar; fat and narrow, tall and small, they’re a veritable fungi family. “They are my kids,” says Parent. “I spend a lot of time with them.”
And maybe as is the way with children, the mushrooms are messy. A pile of decomposing logs occupies one part of the floor, and wood dust sparkles in the air. “I made my first generation all outside,” says Parent. That was 50 mushrooms. Inside, “One carving session takes six hours to clean up.” Parent has constructed a plastic-walled shelter inside the workshop to contain the mess.
The process of carving a mushroom from a log, says Parent, begins freeform. “I just start carving. I don’t know what it’s going to be.” Much of the time, Parent doesn’t even know what kind of wood they’re working with until they’ve cut deep — the bark is too decomposed to reveal that. Parent gestures toward a pile of rough wood, all of which they’ve had for years. The completed mushrooms will age indefinitely, they say. That’s clearly satisfying. “I’ve taken something that’s rotting and made it last forever,” Parent says.
One of the first mushrooms they carved is a large, rugged-looking thing made of oak. The wood had already been worked on before they took a blade to the surface: cut with deep, labyrinthine crevices and pin-prick holes made by resident carpenter ants.
“I started carving into it, and everybody evacuated,” says Parent. “They kept coming out for days.”
Parent likes to work with live-edge wood: pieces with rough, unfinished edges. Some of the mushrooms have tops rimmed with bark. They’re always on the lookout for interesting material like the 150-year-old Siberian elm at Truro Vineyards that was felled in a November storm in 2021. “They were offering it up to artists,” Parent says. They took some home.
Parent eyes a large piece of splintery wood now on the workbench. They’ve been waiting to work with it until it dries out more, but they’re already imagining the shape it will take, toying with what its curves suggest.
Parent doesn’t fight quirks — “I work with all the knots,” they say, “and try to keep all the really cool, natural parts.” Some of the wood they collect is spalted: wood that has been colonized by fungi, resulting in discoloration and marbled patterns that make it sought after.
Parent starts with a chain saw to establish a “general mushroom shape.” Then they take an angle grinder, which has a wood planer on it, and bring the wood down farther, shaping the round top and the thick stem. Parent sometimes uses a ball planer to make little divots — those cover their morels. And often they use a hand torch to “torch the whole thing” for deepened color. Sanding is the final step: with electric sanders first and then by hand. Each mushroom is marked on the bottom with a brand made by a friend.
The end result is a piece that is both solid and soft as silk. Parent runs a hand over the top of one. “I could go a little bit farther,” says the mushroom carver, “but I’m crazy.”
