Mary Schneider Enriquez Trees: Sculpted Form, Enduring Presence (fragment)
Today vast acres of the world’s forests have been decimated in response to man’s essential or selfish needs. This binational exhibition of sculptures poignantly posits art at the center of this struggle for survival, that of tree and ultimately, man.
One literally sees the forest through the trees in this exhibition, aptly titled El Bosque/The Forest, and as such, each sculpture stands as a symbol of the towering plant that soars majestically above us. Sculpture provides a particularly evocative means of depicting a tree, the height and monumentality of an old oak, maple or pine stands like an antique odalisque beyond human scale, commanding attention and respect. And the tree’s various qualities are well conveyed by the myriad of three dimensional expressions constituting this show. To many people, trees simply provide shade, oxygen, furniture or paper products, their physical attributes possess practical not aesthetic value. The sculptures in this show broaden this perspective, in wide ranging variation, they emphasize the monumental presence, the striking visual effects and the commercial benefits of trees. With quiet strength these pieces confront the viewer with the aesthetic and physical pertinence of trees to man’s existence.
Overall, the selected sculptors convey a tree in one of two visual languages, either as an abstract expression that conjures up a tree -its sheer scale and mass, its curved silhouette- or in a mimetic expression that vividly depicts its physical characteristics -the lively spread of limbs and roots, or the palpable expanse of its bark.
Exequiel Ezcurra If the trees die (fragment)
During a visit to the Colombian Amazon in the jungles of Amacayacu, my guide -a native of the jungle and a member of the Ticuna tribe- stood before a giant Kapok and said to me: “the giant trees are like the river. The Kapoks are the Amazon.”
It took me a long time to appreciate the depth of that phrase. I finally remembered my lectures on fractal mathematics and I couldn’t help but think that certainly, a tree is like a river. The river divides into ever smaller tributaries, forming an intricate web of rivulets which are born from springs at the head of the river.
In the same way, the tree divides its trunk into smaller and smaller boughs and branches, forming an intricate web of twigs that shape the canopy of the jungle. Just as the springs are the sites where the rivers join the steep sides of the Andes, the leaves are minute springs of energy where the tree joins the sky, capturing light and transforming it into life-giving energy. In the same way, the delta of the Amazon is like a backwards river, in which its torrential current splits into smaller and smaller streams before finally delivering its water to the sea; the roots of the Kapok are like an inverted cup, from which the enormous trunk is divided into roots and tendrils sinking into the heart of the earth.
“The devastation of the forest,” Humboldt prophesized, “will result in serious consequences for the cycle of water in the valley of Mexico, and will ultimately be the limiting factor in its development.”
Today we also know that our forests are enormous repositories of biological riches, home of a large part of the species of the planet, and the need to conserve them is even more urgent than it was in the 18th Century. Humboldt saw it clearly: the survival of society is measured by its ability to conserve its forests.
I could give a million reasons why we should protect our forests to emphasize the need to stop the ecocide of our jungles. But I can think of no better words than those of my guide in the Amacayacu: “If the trees die, the river will also die.”
William McKibben (fragment)
If a satellite had been orbiting the Earth for the last century -if you could watch a time-lapse video of the world for the last 150 years- here is what you would have seen: a planet turning steadily from green to brown. Much has already been deforested, of course -the Mideast, much of Asia, much of western Europe-. But the pace has accelerated -the great forests of North America, the boreal forests of the North, the vast green seas of the tropics. That disappearing of forests is like a gauge -it measures the greed of lumbermen, but also the desperation of the land-hungry, and the careless waste of the “middle-class” of the rich nations. It measures, too, the disappearing margin for all those creatures that depend fundamentally on the woods: the tiger, the grizzly, the monarch butterfly, the endless anonymous beetles. And it measures too the erosion of that richest refuge of the imagination -the deep, dark, mysterious forest. In a very few places -like the Adirondack mountains, where I have spent my life- the process has been reversed: brown has turned to green as people have backed off, and forests have regrown. There are just enough such examples to keep one from despair. But barely, for these are desperate times.
