Circle of Trees

Hi, my name is Laurie McGugan. I’m the artist that did this piece. The Circle of Trees is the name of this piece and I don’t know if everyone has this experience, but I do have some favourite trees that I have that are in different locations around on the way to places I go regularly. And I’m always monitoring them and this is sort of the same thing, so that you know I think this piece could be that for people that live in this neighbourhood.

As you can see in front of you is a tree that has been cast in bronze. And this tree has been planted in a circle that’s about 60 feet across with 6 other living maple trees. The bronze tree was actually carefully selected and pruned into its simplest form and then cut into 4 foot lengths, cast into bronze, welded all back together like a big jigsaw puzzle, and installed. And the bronze actually acts amazingly like a real tree, it blows in the wind, all of the same things. But it does not… it’s not the type of artwork that jumps out at you and says, “Here I am. Come see me.” You have to make that discovery yourself that this is actually a bronze tree.

But I wanted to take that idea of time passing and relate it to trees and freeze that particular moment that that tree was sacrificed to the artwork and make you aware of that time stopping, and that you can measure the growth of the other trees with this bronze tree whose life stopped, and observe the passing of time that only the trees were telling you about.

Runtime 00:01:55