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Braytoncrete tree footprints
Dimensions variable
Artecology at Stone Quarry Hill Art Park,
Cazenovia, NY
2005-06
Footprint, Shadow, Dripline
There are various forms of evidence of the existence of an entity. Some are as conceptual as they are figurative, and these particularly interest me. Among them are the shadow, footprint and dripline of the entity.
The footprint of a tree for example is abstract, realistic and conceptual at once. One process for recording the footprint involves choosing a living tree based on the shape it makes where it meets the earth, laying a rectangle of fabric on the ground and cutting out the shape made by the perimeter of the trunk, then making a positive of that in steel, concrete, fabric or other material. The tree itself is not impacted in any way.
Because the traced shape consists of organic, asymmetric curves that have no apparent connection with the appearance of any specific organism, the footprint is an abstraction until the viewer becomes aware that its contours have actually been traced.
The shape is realistic in the sense that it is made from a pattern traced from one specific tree. The variety of tree is noted and the GPS location of the tree, its girth, or other identifying information may also be recorded to reinforce that it is a specific tree in a particular location. The viewer could find that tree.
The shape is conceptual in the sense that the contour that is recorded does not physically exist. If the earth around the tree erodes or builds up, the shape and size of the footprint will change. The roots of the tree continue below the edge where the earth meets the trunk; there is no actual line on the tree.
So too, recording the dripline of a rock or other entity yields a shape that has the same three properties: it is also abstract, realistic and conceptual. The dripline simply records the entity's outermost perimeter above ground.
The patterns themselves are not the actual artwork; works are subsequently made from them in other media.
These evidences have one additional strength. They have all been made from organisms geographically distant from one another. When exhibited in groupings, they unite organic entities in Alaska, Tennessee, Iceland, Maine, Massachusetts, California, New York and other locales, an additional conceptual consideration.
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