re-built tree sculpture

April 7, 2011

After christmas 2010, my friend Ryan and I went on a little journey through Red Hook, picking and cutting up christmas tree stalks that people had thrown out. It seemed like such a waste… perfectly good building material that just needed some love and imagination. We also had an upcoming public art RFP on our minds and set out to build a concept sculpture. The idea was, take up scrap materials or smaller portions of cut up trees that were being removed from the site of the public sculpture, and then rebuild some of the trees that were being cut down.

For our concept model we used some reclaimed birch logs from a NYC garden, the christmas tree stalks, and scraps of steel hastily welded together to create some heafty brackets. The result was a pretty wild 8 foot tall post-apocalyptic chimera tree.