Got an old tree on your property you’re planning to cut down? Before you yell "Timberrrrrr!" it might be a good idea to call the Hawai’i Forestry Industry Association.

Your discarded stumps and branches just might wind up on display at the Honolulu Museum of Art School, which hosts the association’s annual exhibition, "Hawaii’s Woodshow, Na La‘au o Hawai‘i." The exhibit runs through Sept. 15.

Just ask organizer Andy Coleman how he got the wood for his set of beautifully turned bowls, which nest together as neatly as Russian matryoshka dolls.

"This one is macadamia nut wood," Coleman said, pointing to a bowl he calls "Born to be Wild." "That came from a house in Pacific Heights. They were hauling it off and I said ‘Wait, wait, I’ll save you the trip.’"

The exhibit showcases craftsmanship and creativity at its finest, with 47 artists submitting 85 items to be judged by a jury of experts. Locally grown — but not necessarily native — woods must be used.

"There’s a lot of pieces that have some interesting history to them, pieces that have come from historical locations," Coleman said.

One of those pieces is a striking credenza created by Joel Bright. It features wood from a New Zealand kauri planted in the mid-1800s by Dr. William Hillebrand, a physician to Queen Consort Kalama, wife of Kamehameha III. She had leased Hillebrand property that eventually became the Foster Botanical Gardens, where the tree would grow to be 105 feet tall. Stricken by bugs, it was cut down in 2007.

Bright obtained a piece of the tree that proved to be a challenge to work with. There were many flaws in the soft wood, so it chipped easily, and the grain "was running all over," he said, providing little guidance as to how to shape and work the wood.

"I’ve been doing stuff like this all my life, pretty much, and I was just dumbfounded by the problems I was having with it," Bright said. He eventually fashioned it into panels that he segmented together in a fiery striated pattern.

"It took five times longer than anything else I work with," he said. "I felt kind of obligated to a certain extent because the tree itself had a history."

Another impressive piece at the show is Bob Butts’ "King’s Cauldron," a huge bowl nearly 4 feet in diameter made from a nearly 1-ton piece of monkeypod. Listening to Butts describe making the piece, one is reminded of the scary safety movies that teachers ran in wood-shop class.

"You got it on a lathe, and you got close to 2,000 pounds spinning around, and you’re standing in front of this thing thinking ‘Gee, I hope those screws hold,’" he said. "And the wood is softer, because it’s wet, so screws don’t like to hold as well."

Other pieces are more relaxing to think about, such as Tak Yoshino’s "Zen Chair." The Japanese carver used a traditional Japanese plane to shape the low chair out of mango. With a seat shaped like a manta wing and small lumbar supports sticking up, the chair is designed to help the user maintain the lotus position.

"I love Zen very much, and I know it’s good for our health, body and soul, but it’s difficult to maintain the (posture)," he said. "So I thought, how can I make it possible to sit in that style in a chair?"