Pulled Resources

In 2005 Dan and Thomas invited sculptor Ben Huber of Covington, KY to work with them on a piece called “The Tree Project” at The Mockbee Center in Cincinnati, OH. In just 25 days, they completed the entire project. It consisted of determining the board footage yield from an average yellow pine tree, the type of lumber used to build palettes and to frame suburban homes, collecting that amount of scrap and discarded yellow pine from local sources, constructing and shaping the collected lumber into the shape of a yellow pine tree in the gallery, and then logging and removing the logs from the space at the closing reception. Viewers were invited to watch the entire process from start to finish.

The Tree Project examines the relationship between the act of construction and natural growth. It addresses the format change of material and object by exchanging the end result of either action. The Tree Project is an object-based-activity wherein both aspects – the object and the activity – are of equal importance and lend to the comprehension of the piece as a whole. The project additionally comments on how human beings view themselves as different from nature and thus attempt to separate from it. Through the use of discarded building lumber, The Tree Project applies these bits of “extra tree” or raw material to build an object based simply on the figure and shape of a tree, while the subtleties of an actual tree are lost.