Tree of Life

Tree of Life is made of various woods, plaster, lots of wood glue, steel, and nails. Most of the material was found in scrap or given by friends. The three structures vary in height, with the smallest one carrying several plaster-cast hands along with a large steel rod twisted into a bent shape. The other two structures are mainly made of small chopped-up pieces of wood, and covered in plaster, with nails drilled into the differing layers. These small pieces were then stacked in large towering structures.
The Tree of Life is a reference to Genesis in The Old Testament, in which the Tree of Life holds Wisdom and Obedience. The tree I have created is a twisted and distorted version of life. The three structures don’t look like trees. They've been deconstructed, broken down into manufactured pieces, and put together with glue that leaks out of the seams, like sap. These trees aren’t alive, with the conveyed message of deconstruction.
This Tree does not hold Wisdom and Obedience. It doesn’t follow a set of rules or life. It can’t, it's been manufactured and processed into scrap no one wanted. A deconstruction of oneself and the hope of refinding that, with the use of plaster-cast hands, was the final goal of this work. The viewer is meant to feel the polarizing unease of trees that aren’t trees and see the hands as a reemergence of life, similar to that of blooming leaves, but colorless and pale, lifeless like the wood beneath them, as if what they are emerging from, as forever changed them.
Most of my work revolves around a reaction to materials rather than sitting down and thinking of a message that needs to be conveyed through work. For this, I saw scrap wood and thought about the waste that can go into art and woodworking. By using these found or gifted materials, I used what was available to create several large structures that turned into a distorted image of a tree, something that is meant to flourish and thrive. As they were being formed I thought of the Tree of Life, a beautiful thing touted in religion, and decided to distort that as well.