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from the issue of April 8, 2004
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Artist to install steel tree in garden
A new “species” will join the trees planted east of Love Library.
| | Artist Roxy Paine works on a branch of the 40-foot stainless steel tree he has created to be installed in Donaldson Garden south of Andrews Hall beginning April 19. Preparation has begun in the garden for the sculpture. Photo courtesy of the artist.
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Beginning April 19, New York artist Roxy Paine will install his latest major work, a 40-foot stainless steel tree, in Donaldson Garden, south of Andrews Hall.
The sculpture, Paine’s sixth and most complex tree sculpture, embodies dualities Paine has explored in his work, said Janice Driesbach, director of UNL’s Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery.
The trunk, which was fabricated in Brooklyn, N.Y., and branches, constructed by the artist from hundreds of pieces of steel tubing in his studio in upstate New York, will be shipped to Lincoln and assembled by Paine and a work crew.
Assisted by riggers and a welder from Lincoln, Paine will oversee the raising of the trunk and then will weld the branches on site. Weather permitting, the installation should be completed within a week.
A dedication ceremony of the work is planned for 4 p.m. June 15, followed by a picnic fund-raiser hosted by the Nebraska Art Association.
Paine was born in 1966 and attended Santa Fe College in New Mexico and Pratt Institute in New York City before leaving school to become a full-time artist. He has won attention for two distinctive bodies of work. Paine creates detailed plant forms, including poppies and mushrooms, which replicate natural phenomena, and produces abstract sculptures or paintings. Both types of work have been featured in exhibitions in France, Germany and Switzerland, as well as throughout the United States.
Paine installed his first large-scale tree, “Imposter,” at the Wanas Foundation in southern Sweden five years ago; his 50-foot-tall tree, “Bluff,” was on view in New York’s Central Park for four months before it was moved to a private collection. The new work, commissioned for the Sheldon sculpture collection with private funds, is Paine’s first major sculpture in this region.
Driesbach notes that while Paine selected the site on campus with UNL landscape designers for its visual characteristics, his tree is also appropriately placed conceptually in the Donaldson Garden, which is devoted to introduced species.
The Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery sculpture garden includes nearly 30 sculptures by artists working throughout the United States during the 20th century. Paine’s tree will be the first 21st-century sculpture to be installed on campus.
The tree, as yet untitled, was commissioned from the artist for $275,000 with funds from the Olga Sheldon Endowment, based on enthusiasm for his earlier work and the maquette, or study, Paine submitted after he visited Lincoln in November 2002.
GO TO: ISSUE OF APRIL 8
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