In my last blog I mentioned that Zorro means ‘Fox’ in Spanish.
DAM (Denver Art Musuem) has an the intriguing exhibit of Sandy Skoglund’s 1989 installation … Fox Games, which has 28 gray fox in various poses in a totally red restaurant. The fox scampering over the floor, tables and chairs; even hanging off the walls. Its totally WILD! Skogland creates these unusual environments and photographs them. While more people are familiar with her photos, to observe one of her installations is a big treat! I saw an installation in New York where everything, people included, were made of cheetos. Cheesy! One of her many themes is the encroachment of humanity upon nature, or in this fox exhibit, nature upon humanity.
In my own neighborhood, we are having that a similar scenario of nature and man encroaching upon each other. While walking my dog, I/we often see fox and coyote, but they usually keep their distance. It’s actually wonderful to be so close to nature. However, a few humans and their pets have had some aggressive encounters with these “wild animals”, and authorities are considering some intervention. My own vet has told me to carry a stick. In Aspen Co, they’re also having many encounters with bears roaming into homes, businesses, or just on the streets.
Some of my artwork is also an example of man’s encroachment upon nature. My ‘Arborglyphs’ series are derived from aspen tree bark, sometimes the natural scarring, sometimes grafitti. Since aspen bark is light colored and fairly smooth in texture, carving grafitti onto aspen trees tends to be very popular.
I have found multitude of tree grafitti with interesting motifs. Names, initials, hearts, and dates are most common. A guess we all have to leave our imprint. The earliest date so far has been 1944. A few interesting words were: “The Life”, “Last Day Working”, and “Good by”. It’s amazying how much grafitti one tree can hold. I can only hope that this encroachment upon the trees does not harm them.
I don’t often see animal words as tree graffiti, but did find the word “FOX”, which became the 6′ x 6″ Arborglyph monoprint below.
Arborglyph: FOX
© 2006 Linda C. Everson,
All Rights Reserved.
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