Sculpting Trees

2014 - ongoing  |  media: trees  |  location: Vendée, France  |  scale: up to 10 x 10m

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Sculpting trees are trees that are, in part, sculpting themselves. They have seeded and grown without our involvement, until we chose them and act on them in lighter or stronger ways to reveal the shape that we see in them. As opposed to topiary that plants and shapes trees in order to achieve a pre determined form, the shape of Sculpting Trees is defined overtime in dialogue. 

The Lovers are an oak and an ash tree that have grown embraced and have started to graft on each other, like a kiss. In this case, we only have removed a few dying branches and thinned other trees around so that they can be seen and have space to grow.

Shiva feeding the Birds reveals the multiple arm of an ash that had been previously coppiced.

The resulting trees are simultanously looking natural and figurative. Their shape will continue evolving in a dialogue between our acts and the trees response. Overtime, they will gain the anthropomorphic, or animal, quality of pollarded trees. 

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