When a 65-year-old tree succumbed to a fungus often known as oak wilt, Steve Parker wished to pay tribute. The wooded habitat had beforehand loomed above Parker’s entrance yard and offered refuge to migratory birds. Relatively than flip its limbs and trunk into mulch, although, Parker did as he usually does with a cloth that’s not primed for its authentic objective: he created a sound sculpture.
Not too long ago on view at Ivester Up to date in Austin, “Funeral for a Tree” is a sprawling and poetic ode to the oak. Parker lower slices from the trunk that he then carved like vinyl, encoding chicken music into the grain. When positioned on a Victrola-style turntable, the information play the avian soundscapes.
To accompany these dirges, Parker additionally constructed a suspended brass and copper sculpture with tubing that splays like roots, a few of which show blue-bag ventilators at their ideas. These medical units seem alongside CPAP machines in one other set up of bark-clad limbs and classic devices often known as shengs sourced from a Taipei flea market.
Emphasizing breath and the rhythmic pulse of life, these additions additionally reference the artist’s late father. “The venture emerged from Parker’s recognition that his grief for the tree echoed the lack of his father to most cancers—each sluggish, inevitable declines the place care couldn’t stop loss,” a press release says.
Watch “Funeral for a Tree” within the video above, and discover extra from the artist on Instagram.
