Untitled - (tree)
Year Completed: 2026
Materials: Fabric, yarn, glue, re-used fabric bolts, birch wood, screws
Dimensions: 32” x 44”
Status: In Personal Collection
Publication:
Artistonish Magazine - 71st Issue (June 2026)
Exhibition:
Abstraction 2026 - Gallerium Online (July - September 2026)
Shape and Colors - Gallerium Online (July - September 2026)
Brookview Golden Valley - Golden Valley, MN (June - September 2026)
The Process
This piece began with material exploration. I spent time at SR Harris in Brooklyn Park looking through fabrics and choosing patterns that could work together while still creating contrast across the piece. I wanted the fabric to carry some of the visual complexity, so I experimented with different combinations, orientations, and tile-like arrangements before settling on the final composition. The fabric was then wrapped around reused fabric bolts, transforming discarded materials into the layered rectangular forms that make up the central structure.
Building the wooden support introduced a more mathematical process. I cut the plywood into an irregular organic shape and constructed a series of wooden posts to push the fabric-covered forms away from the surface at different depths. Rather than determining those depths intuitively, I used Desmos to graph a logarithmic function and calculate the height of each post. I measured and cut the posts according to those values, creating a progression in depth across the work. This allowed the piece to move gradually from a relatively flat surface into a more sculptural form while following a consistent mathematical system.
The tree was the final layer and was constructed directly onto and through the assembled structure using bright blue yarn. I built the trunk from many individual strands, dividing and redirecting them to form branches that travel across the different planes of fabric. At the bottom, the strands separate again into a root-like structure before extending beyond the physical edge of the work. Because the fabric panels sit at different depths, the yarn does not simply rest on their surfaces—it stretches across gaps, wraps around edges, and moves through three-dimensional space. The final construction brings together fabric, wood, mathematics, reuse, and hand-built linework in a piece that shifts between image and sculpture.
Ideas
By inverting familiar relationships between earth and sky, this work explores cycles of transformation and the ways we understand nature through expected patterns. The tree takes on the blue of the atmosphere, while the landscape shifts through earthy, seasonal tones, deliberately disrupting where these colors traditionally belong. The logarithmically scaled layers extend outward from the wall, allowing the landscape to physically change in depth as it moves through space. The tree continues beyond these constructed boundaries, with its branches and roots stretching across and below the layered forms. Together, these inversions of color, scale, and dimension transform a familiar landscape into something less fixed, moving between seasons, surface and sculpture, and natural and constructed systems.