Our neighbour in the woods had to cut several large pines after the extremely hot and dry summers of 2019 and after.
They had simply died.
Fungi grew on them, bark beetles gnawed, bluing and mould weakened them, woodpeckers had built nests in them, they had lost all their needles.
Climate change in all it's devastating brutality.
When I started this piece, I selected a log that from the outside looked pretty good, but when I began to work on it, I found more and more "flaws".
And somehow this sculpture became essential for me in realising, that to me, these are features, not “bugs” as we say with software.
Like people, trees carry their history with them.
And I won't apply cosmetics or plastic surgery to cover it.
That isn't who I am, nor my intent.
In later sculptures I explicitly welcomed and integrated whatever the tree had to offer and had lived through. In this piece this was not that clear to me yet and I struggled quite a bit.
Like the life stage where we stop trying to be somebody else and accept and embrace who we really are.
That can be awkward at first, scary even, but ultimately it's the only direction worth going.
And there is a very deep beauty to be found when we become ourselves.
And all that is in there:
Beautiful areas where the form is really flowing and in resonance with the features of the tree, areas where it's not really clear where things are going - and everything in between.
Fittingly, the sculpture rests in several positions and shows different forms and structures in each. In above pictures I hanged it from the ceiling, which I somehow prefer.