photo by: Lauren Fox

In his second-ever wood carving project, Danny Mantyla made a peace sign out of a mulberry tree in his front yard between 15th and 16th Streets on Massachusetts Street.

A large peace sign wood carving has cropped up on Massachusetts Street, and it’s become the subject of many selfies, car honks and conversations.

Danny Mantyla, the creator of the carving, said it’s just what it looks like: a peace sign with no between-the-lines meaning.

“To me it’s just a friendly gesture — just a nice hand gesture,” he said. “Be kind and have peace. I think that’s what the peace sign means to me at least.”

After moving away for a year to Portland, Ore., Mantyla and his wife came back to Lawrence — where Mantyla had lived since 2006 — just a few months ago. Their home, on Massachusetts Street between 15th and 16th streets, had a large mulberry tree that needed to come down. A large limb had recently dropped and almost fell on a car in the parking lot of the apartment building next door. It wasn’t the first time the dying tree had lost limbs.

Mantyla and a friend worked together to cut it down, and Mantyla knew he wanted to turn the trunk into a sculpture of some kind. He just didn’t know what form the sculpture would take.

“It had a big large trunk but it was only a few feet tall and then it split into twin trunks,” he said. “When we were cutting it down it just looked already like it wanted to be a peace sign. So the tree kind of told me what it wanted to be.”

photo by: Lauren Fox

Danny Mantyla, who recently made a peace sign out of a mulberry tree in his front yard, shows where the tree had been splitting.

This project was only Mantyla’s second time doing wood carving, and his first time doing it on such a large scale. It took him about two weeks to finish, and he worked on it several hours a day for a few days each week. He used a small electric chainsaw for most of the carving, but he also had an angle grinder with woodworking attachments that he used to carve out the final shape.

photo by: Logan Mantyla

Danny Mantyla works on his peace sign wood carving.

During the process, passersby would stop to take pictures and ask him what it would be, he said. Since it’s been finished on Aug. 20, the image is clear, and Mantyla said people frequently stop to take pictures with it.

“I would call myself a tree-hugger,” Mantyla said. He has a tattoo on his forearm of a tree stump with a plant sprouting out of it. Underneath are the words, “Have hope.”

photo by: Lauren Fox

Danny Mantyla, who describes himself as a “tree-hugger,” has a tattoo of a tree stump with a plant growing out of it on his forearm.

Mantyla plans to plant flowers and shrubs around the wood carving, and eventually plant another tree behind it. He also intends to put a coat of wood sealer on it, and stain the sapwood so that it matches the heartwood, since right now the sculpture is two different colors.

Mantyla said he he read that mulberry wood is resistant to decay, and he hopes his wood carving will last a long time. He feels there is civil unrest in today’s world, and that a peace sign is not only pertinent in the present “but also something that we’re always going to need in the future, because we need to be kind to each other now and just always.”

As he stood outside his home next to the wood carving Wednesday, a passing car honked its horn. The driver lifted his hand to reveal another hand sign: a thumbs up.

That isn’t an unusual occurrence, Mantyla noted. His face had lit up with joy.