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my most vivid memory of Guatemala is the

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Sea of trees in the paton in the north

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of Guatemala this

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series of ridges going out onto the horizon line. So I

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knew when the art and embassies program contacted

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me that I would want to make a sculpture that related to those

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trees and I settled on an individual type of

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tree a ceiba.

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I was interested in the ceiba tree initially because it

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was the national tree of Guatemala, but it was

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also the tree that drew me in when I was in the jungle. It

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was either the tallest tree or the widest and

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largest tree but it was also formally really

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beautiful the way in which these lumbering

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limbs moved out into space and and

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then brought you into investigate its

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bark and the surface of the bark was very different

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if it was a juvenile where these spikes were

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very large relative to the volume of the trunk and then

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as the tree grew you just sort of see these little vestigial

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knobs on it surface and they

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would play with light in these beautiful shadows.

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Carolina Rosales de Zea is the director

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of the botanical gardens in Guatemala City and

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she is, beyond being a lovely person was an amazing

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resource in trying to find the right Ceiba tree

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to base the sculpture on Carolina helped

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connect me with a family just near Antigua

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In Guatemala and they had this spectacular

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save a tree which is the tree that I ultimately ended up

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using as the inspiration for the sculpture.

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Carolina along with a couple of associates helped me to scan the tree.

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It was a rather elaborate process and also through this

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process. I got to meet some of the family in particular

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a brother and sister that have been the most recent caretakers of

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the tree and learned a lot about the trees

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biology both from them and as well from Carolina.

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Juxtaposing, the Guatemalan experience which was so

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social and collaborative in terms of finding that tree. I set

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out in the Great Basin in Nevada in

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the United States to find a Bristlecone Pine. It was a very

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solitary endeavor and it was high

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altitude. I was at 11,000 feet

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when I found this tree and it took me a lot of time and I

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did it actually with plaster casts.

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While the Ceiba is a much larger tree three, maybe

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400 years old. The Bristlecone Pine

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is much smaller, but three or four thousand years old.

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So they’re very different types of trees, but formally

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when brought together and adjusted for scale, I

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think they’re very convincingly read as one specific tree.

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To fabricate the sculpture the larger

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planes of the sculpture where individual pieces

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fit together were very carefully calibrated.

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But what happened within each of those frames

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was much more left within the purview

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of the person creating that such that

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they could have aesthetic influence. So if they were on

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the seabus side, you would see some of the the spiky quality

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or for me almost like waves that

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you saw in that sea of trees. And if

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you’re on the bristlecones side, there were burles that sort

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of bulged out from the surface that were something that

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people could riff upon and so we also began with

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a hologram of the sculpture so

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that we could see it in scale move around it adjust its

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scale and then moved into a much

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more sort of old school armature of building the sculpture

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so that we could do it in a reductive way.

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So you would over build some of these pieces and then carve away

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that negative space to get what you

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To install the sculpture. We erected a scaffold

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so that we could actually be building the base of the

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sculpture which is also on the plane of

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the staircase. So when you approach the sculpture

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through the staircase and you’re standing at its Landing you’re standing

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at the imaginary ground plane of where this tree will

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be but you’re 20 feet off the ground. So when we finished

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installing the sculpture that scaffold disappears and it

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floats

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We also had 60 feet above the

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sculpture in which we had to tie cables into the ceiling to

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support it. And because this is such an

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active seismic zone we have horizontal cables, which brace

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the sculpture in the big size.

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It was really satisfying to work with Miller Hull because

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they were early enough in the design process with the

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architecture that they were able to respond to some

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of the decision-making in the sculpture. Primarily the

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fact that there’s a three foot Gap through the sculpture so

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that that three foot Gap actually continues in

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through the building in the architecture.

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prizes for me

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In seeing the sculpture actually installed in the embassy was getting

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this Vantage from above. I mean, we’re given

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so many different advantages through this beautiful architecture

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that feels so integrated. And another

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thing that I think really stands out for me is how

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activated that three foot Gap

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is between the two halves of the sculpture. It’s it’s a

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kind of a sense of a boundary but on the

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other hand because it isn’t actually anything existing

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in space. I think it nicely Echoes

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the fact that we create artificial constructs

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between people between countries

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and that when we look more closely. Yes,

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they’re all these little differences. But ultimately there’s this

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real sense of a kind of unified whole