Planting Trees (2005)
Video (9:15) and site-specific installation. Three twenty-foot-long pine two-by-fours.
This video acts as documentation for a remote outdoor sculpture. Three twenty-foot long two-by-fours and a post-hole digger were purchased at a lumberyard. The beams were then taken to Treman State Park and stood upright in the ground.
This work explores man's relationship to nature and time. Constantly creating synthetic environments, we are systematically removing nature from our reality. In this work, I attempt to give back trees to the forest from which they came. As an imperfect being, however, it can only be a symbolic gesture. Alternatively, the act could be viewed as bringing artificiality to the natural environment. I am committing the first act in changing the forest into something man-made. Ironically, a tree must first be cut down and processed into lumber before I return it to the forest.
The two-by-fours have aged with time, weathering in color and texture, growing ever more similar to their surroundings; in essence, losing the battle.
video still
video still
video still
video still
video still
video still
video still
video still
video still
video still
