" Native to Australia, the Casuarina glauca, or swamp she-oak, was brought to Florida's Everglades as an ornamental species, but began to spread quickly and becoming invasive, resulting in its denomination as a weed, and a ban from being planted in several counties."
The process for this project began at one of our firsts works for the topic. I visited AD Barnes park in South Miami, to explore my feelings and experiences there. While I sat there and breathed in calm, I noticed a familiar tree, I had seen in my country. It was a tall tree, 15-20ft, and it's leaves were extremely thin, like hairs. This caught my attention enough to make it my 30 min. observational drawing.
The topic continued and we explored how man creates and affects landscape and how a lot of decisions are made behind the curtains, in order to achieve a goal when constructing a space. By this moment I knew I wanted to create a sculpture, something which I had never done before.
The Barnes tree kept coming back to me, and I decided to create a tree sculpture, but the concept was still developing, and needed layers of work. I researched the tree and found out it's provenance and the effects it's had here in Florida as well as in Cuba, on a lesser degree.
Here is the breakdown of the process.
Used Wire copper of both 14 gauge and 18 gauge. The reason for this was both conceptual and contextual. wanted a material that could bend but keep form and came in strings, as well as having the added commodity of having a brown tone that helps the tree root read. It accentuates the context. It is a man made representation of how man affects the environment.
I wanted to keep the piece abstract enough to give it freedom ( and free myself as well) but not too abstract that I would lose the crowd. Due to material constraints in the difficulty of finding bare copper of 14 gauge, I had to resort to a different approach when setting up the piece. Originally of more individual pieces and more interaction with the other sides of the columns, A description was added. The description emulates that of a museum piece, which both adds credibility and in this case gives the viewer enough to begin understanding the piece, but not as much as to not create curiosity about it.
Overall I believe the piece was an effective commentary on how we influence our surroundings and can sometimes create problems in our efforts to play designer and god with our world and landscapes.
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