Trees: Silent Tree with Geisel library in background

Allen's diverse talents and experiences are highlighted in his first outdoor project, Trees, for the Stuart Collection. He remarks upon the continual loss of natural environment at UCSD by salvaging three eucalyptus trees from a grove razed to make way for new campus buildings. Two of these trees, preserved and encased in skins of lead, stand like ghosts within a eucalyptus grove between the Geisel Library and the Faculty Club. Although they ostensibly represent displacement or loss, these trees offer a kind of compensation: one emits a series of recorded songs and the other a lively sequence of poems and stories created and arranged specifically for this project.

For the music tree, William T. Wiley, known for his paintings filled with literary puns and eccentric maps, sings Ghost Riders in the Sky, accompanying himself on a homemade instrument; West Texas singer Joe Ely sings Mona Lisa Squeeze My Guitar, while the Maines Brothers work pedal steel guitars, a Thai band plays, and filmmaker/musician David Byrne sings a song he composed especially for this project. For the literary tree, Bale Allen delivers his poem about scabs, the poet Philip Levine recites, plus there are Navajo chants, translations of Aztec poems, duck calls, and many other sound works. Trees is a continuous project and Allen and others are at work on future contributions.

One could walk through the grove several times before noticing Allen's two unobtrusive trees. Not only do these trees reinvest a natural site with a literal sense of magic but they implicitly make connections between nature and death and the life of the spirit. It is not surprising that students have dubbed this area the "Enchanted Forest."

At the entrance to the vast, geometric library the third tree of Allen's installation remains silent - perhaps another form of the tree of knowledge, perhaps a reminder that trees must be cut down to print books and build buildings, perhaps a dance form, or perhaps noting that one can acquire knowledge both through observation of nature and through research.

"The Silent Tree (Tree of Contents) was later moved (1993) from its initial placement to the front of the Geisel Library after the expansion of the building eliminated the sculpture's original position." - Mary Beebe, Director of the Stuart Collection

• 1986

• Stuart Collection (San Diego, Calif.)

• Rittermann, Philipp Scholz (American photographer, 1955 CE-)

• Allen, Terry (American conceptual artist and musician, born 1943)

• Beebe, Mary Livingstone (American, born 1940)

Near the Geisel Library: University of California, San Diego; La Jolla, California, United States

lead; sound systems; eucalyptus trees; nails; Eucalyptus

• Installations
• Landscape architecture
• Outdoor sculpture
• Political art
• Public art
• Sculpture
• Site-specific works
• Sound sculpture

• UC San Diego Library
• University of California, San Diego--History

• Adaptive reuse
• American
• Contemporary
• Death
• Forests
• Humor
• Libraries (buildings)
• Nature
• Recycling
• Satire
• Tombs
• Trees

Point: 32.880513, -117.237519

• image

• No linguistic content; Not applicable

Architecture and City Planning

Decorative Arts, Utilitarian Objects and Interior Design

Garden and Landscape

Sculpture and Installations

• Rittermann, Philipp Scholz (American photographer, 1955 CE-)

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2022-10-27