![]() I felt I needed to bring a ghost forest to the heart of Manhattan, and to find trees that were as close to Manhattan as I possibly could find. ![]() #Maya lin art work how toAs I was thinking about how to approach this project and site, I could not stop looking at the ghost forest right outside my studio in Colorado, which looks out onto those national forest lands. Planting trees was an idea that seemed to fit the temporality of the project. It is not a time frame I am familiar with in my outdoor installations. Being more accustomed to making permanent large-scale works, I knew a different approach had to be taken, that I wanted to create something transient and temporal rather than a work that felt more like one of my permanent pieces. In Southwestern Colorado, where my family and I live in the summer, the national forest lands show evidence of beetle infestation one season, with upper needles turning reddish brown, and by the next season the entire stand has died.Īs I approached thinking about a sculptural installation for the Madison Square Park Conservancy I knew I wanted to create something that would be intimately related to the park itself, the trees, and the state of the earth. These are called ghost forests, and they are being killed off by rising temperatures, deforestation, saltwater inundation as seas rise, forest fires, and insects whose populations are thriving in these warmer temperatures the trees themselves are more susceptible to beetles due to being overstressed from rising temperatures. Throughout the world, climate change is causing vast tracts of forest to die. With Ghost Forest I was able to create something that is an environmental sculptural artwork as well as part of a more advocacy-driven project of mine, What Is Missing?, a memorial devoted to raising awareness about what we are losing from the natural world that also emphasizes what can be done to help both protect and restore species and habitats as well as reduce climate change emissions. I started my career working with themes of memory and loss, and I have throughout my life been drawn to continue with these memory works, while still pursuing both my art and architectural practices. I see them as silent gentle giants that I am asking you to get to know. They form a silent grove that bears witness to the immense and almost incomprehensible global forest die-off, and yet there is a haunting beauty to them. I wanted to bring you face to face with these powerful and magnificent trees that grow so near Manhattan-they come from New Jersey-and that are rapidly disappearing. With Ghost Forest in Midtown Manhattan, I am bringing together a need to make you aware of the horrible threats we face due to climate change, and a need to connect you in an intimate and powerful way to the simple yet majestic beauty of nature. My artworks have been shaped by the reactions I have had to the sites they occupy, trying to explore new ways of shifting your perception of the site itself and trying to connect you to your immediate natural environs. What is our relationship to nature in the 21st century, with climate change being one of the greatest threats that we face, and becoming so much a part of how we see the world? And how should we be rethinking our relationship to this world? In my work I find myself intrigued with trying to forge a connection back to the natural world-to maybe get you to pause and listen and take a closer look at what is all around us, things you may not have looked at or listened to since you were a child. ![]() These sentiments and concerns I still carry with me, but with climate change threatening the planet and us, it has become a more and more urgent issue for me.īeyond Painting: Performances, Sculptures, and Rituals in 2021 that Engaged all the Senses Growing up, I was extremely aware of how the actions of one species, mankind, was having such a damaging effect on the environment. My relationship to the natural world was formed playing in those hills, but I was equally influenced in those years by the emergence of the environmental movements that shaped how governments created protections for cleaner air and water, and for endangered species. It grew into a long winding ridge, and ended in what, to my brother and me, looked like the head of a lizard. I called the middle one the “lizard’s back” because it started up from the creek bed, like a tail. ![]() Behind our house were three forested ridges separated by streams my entire childhood was spent playing in those woods and on those hills. I grew up in Athens, Ohio, surrounded by woods. So many of us live in cities, and are so removed from nature. ![]()
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