Photo courtesy of A.J. Reinhard Meet Amber Jean: the "Extreme Carver" by Marjorie Smith Amber Jean Reinhard, '94 Art, is carving out more time to enjoy her Montana lifestyle these days, despite her burgeoning success creating intricate woodcarvings. "I need to have time for things like skiing and ice climbing," she says. It's just as well. She was recently featured as one of five prominent woodcarvers in a series of half-hour portraits on the DIY television channel. "I was the only female selected, which tickles me especially since they titled my show 'The Extreme Carver.'" Friends and fans of the Livingston-based artist—who uses the name Amber Jean professionally—might say there are some other extreme things about her besides her choice of recreation. She's extremely talented, successful and has always been hardworking. She graduated from MSU with high honors. Her honors thesis was her first sculpture show. She is best known for her work in wood, including massive pieces like a bed that seems to be composed of an entire corner of a forest, and a benevolent life-size buffalo sheltering a cozy bench. (Samples of her work can be seen on her Web site at www.amberjean.com.) But she doesn't always work in wood. At one point there was chocolate—tons of it. Amber Jean acknowledges that at times, she has been very lucky. "It was a cyberspace fluke," she says. "I'm a chocoholic. My Web site says my work is fueled by chocolate. So if you type 'chocolate' and 'sculptor' into a search engine, I'm going to come up." She describes her 'dive into Willie Wonka-land'as fun, and a lot a work. The first year the folks at Nestle provided her with 1,500 pounds of chocolate to carve. The second year it was 5,000 pounds. "Then I retired from chocolate carving," Amber Jean says. "I rolled my increased thighs onto the plane and came home." The publicity, she says, was "amazing and bizarre." She ended up being flown to Los Angeles as a contestant on a game show. "I won $5,000 and that led to other TV gigs." Through all the glitz and glitter, she remains serious about her art. "I always believed that if you work hard and do authentic new work, you'll get discovered. But you have to let people know about you." She realized that during a women's business seminar in West Yellowstone 10 years ago. She completed one or two large commissions a year, but almost no one saw her work when it ended up in private homes and collections. Some of the zanier breaks in her life—think chocolate—helped get broader exposure for her work. She's now doing smaller scale, table-top pieces that are carved in wood and then cast in bronze. "I'm about to put up my first solo museum exhibit at Paris Gibson Square in Great Falls—all wood, glass and steel—a whole new body of work," she says. And although she has enjoyed extreme success so far, Amber Jean won't predict which direction her work will take next, saying only, "It's always good to try new things."