MONUMENTAL TREE SCULPTURES: JOHN GRADE

JOHN GRADE
Trees are nature’s sculptures as much as they are lifeforms and key players in many ecosystems. They are beautifully crafted, as they grow, with beautiful shapes. Artist John Grade creates tree sculptures using trees as both his models and materials.
Inspired by changing geological and biological forms and systems in the natural world, Grade and his studio team create large-scale site-specific immersive sculptural installations. He has been working with a series of projects related to trees for the past several years.
Impermanence and chance are frequent aspects. Kinetics and relationships between the natural world and architecture are frequent themes.
Grade spends as much time as possible amongst Bristlecone Pines in the Nevada Great Basin, as well as closer to home in old-growth groves in the Olympic and Cascade Mountains.

“Treeline,” an epic installation at the Karl Miller Center atrium at Portland State University, is made primarily from Alaskan yellow cedar salvaged in SE Alaska. The upper reaches of the sculpture are made with metasequoia salvaged from the site of the building.

The sculpture, which measures 31' x 12' x 10', is suspended 10' above the building entry, adjacent a five-story wall of windows. It is visible from both outside and inside the building. The sculpture is inspired by the Great Basin bristlecone pine, one of the oldest living trees in the world.

Grade’s “Middle Fork” is currently installed in the Seattle Art Museum's Brotman Forum (the main entry to the museum) and will remain their through 2019. The piece was originally created in 2015 at the MadArt Studio in Seattle. Each time “Middle Fork” has been exhibited since then, it has increased in length and width. The sculpture is currently 105’ long with limbs radiating 30’ wide.

This piece was cast from a living 140-year old hemlock tree which stands within a forest near the middle fork of the Snoqualmie River in the Cascade Foothills in Washington State.
Grade and his team began by making a full plaster cast of the living tree, then used this mold to recreate the tree’s form out of thousands of pieces of reclaimed old-growth cedar.

After the sculpture has completed its exhibition cycle, it will be laid at the base of this tree to gradually moss over and disintegrate into the ground. The process of decay will be captured with time-lapse photography and motion sensor video.
Over 3000 people have contributed to the creation of the sculpture.

Grade’s “Canopy Tower” is currently installed at the Contemporary Austin Museum’s sculpture park at Laguna Gloria. A trail beside Lake Austin leads to the sculpture through a densely wooded section of the grounds.

The hollow fluted wood form (Ipe hardwood) is 16’ high, 15’ in diameter, and suspended 4’ above the ground. Rope runs horizontally and vertically through the interior of each of the sculpture’s carved panels and connects to steel supports 40 feet above the ground. It is rigged to move with the wind, yet remain stable.

While most artists create small-scale sculptures and works on paper in planning out their larger works, Grade creates these following the completion of large-scale installations so he can investigate alternative directions that his larger sculptures might have taken.

Grade recreated a magnificent 40-foot tall 150-year old tree from the Cascade Mountains for the grand reopening of the Renwick Gallery, in Washington, DC.
He hired arborists to work with his team to rope up the tree, setting up a pulley system to haul up buckets of water, to create a handcrafted plaster cast, while protecting the tree throughout the process.

Grade, his team, and hundreds of volunteers individually glued about a half million precisely measured segments of reclaimed, old-growth cedar to the cast. It took many months to recreate each detail of the original tree by hand.
Grade is currently working on a three-year project documenting and modeling changing landforms above the Arctic Circle with a particular interest in pingos, tundra polygons, peat mounds and palsas.

John is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (NY), a Tiffany Foundation Award (NY), three Andy Warhol Foundation Grant Awards (NY), two Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grants (NY), the Arlene Schnitzer Prize from the Portland Art Museum (OR).

Grade’s work is exhibited internationally in museums, galleries, and outdoors in urban spaces and nature. His projects are designed to change over time and often involve collaboration with large groups of people. He lives and works in Seattle.

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