The trees you know; the tree you don’t know

The trees you know are Roxy Paine‘s. They’re all over the place, including at the Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park. (Image via SAM)

The tree you’re less likely to know:

Chris Sicat, Redwood Tree Top (Tag a Log) 2009, Graphite on redwood, 14 feet tall (Image via)

Sicat hand-colored a 14-foot Redwood log with pencil, which he intends as a dialogue between two natural elements: (from Otis)

I begin with looking at the wood form and the flow of the grain. I smoothen the wood to prep the drawing surface, which is a paradox in that it is a sculpture that is being imagined. At this point, I start to see a non-linear narrative script written out…. and this is where the moments of undefined deuce begins… a buzzing of the electric pencil sharpener… the scratching of the needle point of a soft graphite pencil onto a hard redwood log. The music plays…. miles and miles and miles of Miles Davis, lines after lines after lines til there is an infinite of graphite fibers making a collective mass… the grains finds their moment to rise and descend… the sounds of contemporary chamber music, Erik Satie, Hank Williams, Chemical Brothers, Scott Joplin and Snoop Dog… the crescendo brings the form of the woods and I find quiet moments in the knots and grooves… the hand plots to contemplate… concentrate… and converse back to nature… All this happens in between the engagement of the tag and the log.