twisted saw apple (sold)

mild steel, twisted square fencing, found materials

7’h x 4’w

The Forest of Metal Trees

One spring while visiting the HoresHead Sculpture Show, hosted by the closed Sandpoint Naval Base outside of Seattle, I pulled into a defunct parking lot that once had the capacity for hundreds of vehicles. The lot had heaved asphalt with vegetation bursting forth through the broken pavement.

In my mind's eye I saw metal trees springing up through the lot. Made from the detritus that caused the earth’s great forests’ extinction, from the materials that represented the destruction of our forests and natural world ~ steel, choker cable, car parts, saw blades, fencing, pikes, and pipes, metal objects that people willfully discarded into the ocean and then had washed up onto the beach. Trees made from the refuse of industrialization, land development and defoliation.

That day at HorseHead was the beginnng of The Forest of Metal Trees.

A slag-splattered apocalyptic reality where the things that made the forests die are the only things left to use to recreate what had destroyed them.

buddha’s cloud

mild steel, horseshoes, square fencing, steel plate, forged steel, found materials

52”h x 62” dia, base, 34” dia.

top of buddha’s cloud

mild steel, horseshoes, square fencing, steel plate, forged steel, found materials

45”h x 47”w x 44”d, base 24” dia

orbit folia

mild steel, pipes, car parts, found materials

63”h x 41” x 32” dia, base 28” sq

copper trees

handmade paints, dry pigments, acrylic polymers, copper metalics, patina

48”h x 36”w

Soda Pop Box Altars

I acquired a large pile of old and mostly broken wooden soda pop boxes from the early 20th century. They were made from cedar and fir. Painted, or wood burned into their sides, were the names of the sodas and the bottling companies. Most of the companies were located in cities on the Olympic peninsula, like Sequim and Port Angeles, Washington. All of them near to the the great Pacific Northwest rain forests.

I had been reading about aluminum single serving cans and their impact on the earth's carbon footprint. The aluminum traveling four times around the planet, child labor, mining runoff, water and manufacturing pollution, etc.

I realized that the soda pop boxes had been made to transport the first of mass produced single serving beverage containers. The trees were dying in the service of soda pop consumption.

Using only the materials from the boxes ~ their wood, metal banding and nails ~ I made altars to the fallen trees.