In the Ojibwa Creation Story, the muskrat swam down into the ocean to collect a paw full of soil from somewhere far, far beneath the surface of the water. The turtle carried the soil on top of her shell, letting it spread across her back and expand to become the earth. Anable Basin, an artificial body of water dug out during the Second Industrial Revolution, does not a happy habitat make for courageous muskrats and selfless turtles today, but it has been given A Tree just the same.
A Tree for Anable Basin is a sculpture of a tree formed with a wire frame and a textured aluminum skin and “planted” on platform that will float off Hunters Point, Queens. Native plants rooted in real soil and solar-powered lights make the Tree habitat-like, if not habitable.
Obviously, this piece is visually and thematically comparable to Roxy Paine’s Three Sculptures in Madison Square Park, but its installation in a body of water is striking in a different way. I pass the stainless steel trees (two lean into a shadeless embrace on the center lawn; a third is dead, “rotting” on its own off to the side) and boulders in Madison Square Park and notice how easily they might go unnoticed. The assumption could be made that those manmade elements were added to the park’s landscape to replace natural elements that were somehow lost to urbanness, the way an artificial limb fills a physical void on a human body.
The sculpture in Anable Basin cannot be mistaken for a surrogate. Trees do not take root in water. It doesn’t belong out there, it doesn’t make sense, not as wood or as aluminum. The installation speaks to issues of rightful land use and celebrates environmental regeneration, but as its floating form beckons eyes past the shore, it also offers a silent invitation to what will likely be the next frontier in landscape architecture.
Water surface area and volume provide hopeful opportunities for wind- and water-powered energy, but will there be any resources left to conquer once we take to the sea? The artificial island looks like a green mirage floating in an industrial waterway, but as it sways with the tide, an eerily foreign body, it also resembles a silver space station drifting in the darkness beyond the sky. To what oasis will we flee next?
Tree‘s current location is temporary. The sculpture is meant to float unanchored so it can travel naturally through New York City’s waterways. This plan will raise some arguments on practicality from city officials, but I hope that the tree meets an audience beyond Anable Basin. The figure is beautiful; equally graceful and bold. The unfolding branches almost look like they’ve been arranged too carefully. In silhouette, the shape is too balanced, too elegant. And what’s most stunning is that it was modelled after the real thing.
“Trees go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far!“—John Muir
