It’s hard to believe that applying a brutish chainsaw to a chunk of hardwood could result in the sinuously flowing sculptures of Brad Sells. Yet that’s how the Cookeville, Tenn.-based artist begins the process by which his artworks are realized.

Sell’s work will be among the more than 650 artisans exhibited later this month at the American Craft Council Show at the Baltimore Convention Center.

Sells, 35, worked with clay while studying at the Appalachian Center for Crafts. When he switched to wood, he retained a ceramist’s love of delicately curved, organic forms-and learned to achieve them using the most indelicate tools. He often starts with a log taken from near his home, an area thick with maple, oak and cherry, then chainsaws out a rough form before getting down to the details with a belt sander and an angle grinder.

It’s noisy business, he says, but the finished works-marked by billows and undulations, evocative of exotic corals or seashells-suggests serenity and quietude.

Feb. 25 to 27 at the Baltimore Convention Center.

 Telephone: 410-583-5401.

 Web Site: www.craftcouncil.org .