Twenty-four. Tree Art Assemblage: A New Challenge
This post will be brief, as an announcement of a new, and very challenging, tree art project. I’m planning a series of posts to document its makings and, hopefully, its public placement as a tree art exhibit.
I’ve begun to design a tree art assemblage, essentially as a tribute to the contorted Rocky Mountain lodgepole pine–Pinus contorta v. latifolia.
I’m working with an urge to select a variety of contorted lodgepole pine tree trunk motifs (see below), and to assemble them into a sculptural forest, a “stand” of pines that is both physical and figurative. Within this stand, I imagine interconnected chairs and benches to serve as public seating.
For many years I’ve thought about this kind of project, and came up with the term “monumental tree art” to describe it. Part of its being monumental would be the architectural setting, which I’ve imagined as a rustic hotel lobby or an art museum foyer. (I have the perfect place in mind, the best setting I can imagine for my tree art, but it would be premature to disclose it.)
I admit that this challenge is great enough–in terms of design, workmanship, and finding a public placement–that I might not be able to make it happen.
As preliminaries, I’m looking in my storage to select component trees. I’ll take photos and make sketches to include in a later posts. Below is a graphics display, prepared for a Creighton Block Gallery exhibit and talk last year, of the recurring contorted lodgepole tree trunk motifs I’ve identified over the past twenty-plus years:
C. Jack Waller, Jr's Southwest Montana Tree Art 