Form, Aesthetic, and Content
The form of this piece is a segment of a great big lumbering tree. A cut out of the entirety of the piece is focused and invites you to examine the details of one segment of the form of the tree before stepping back and appreciating the entirety of the tree. This piece brings focus to the natural aesthetic of all the life that grows around us, the complexity of the veins in the leaf, the rough jagged uniform toughness of the bark, the insects crawling along the form that occupies all that they know. The square marking off this piece serves to catch the eye simply because it’s unusual. It’s an invitation to slow down and think about something as simple as a tree it steals moments from your day to remind you about all the life that surrounds you no matter where you are, all the complexity that exist within an arm’s reach.
The Nature of the Art
So why this tree? Out of all the trees that were on campus what makes this tree special? The answer is, nothing. Nothing about this tree makes it any more or less artistic than any other tree on campus. Someone very well could’ve had an art experience with this particular tree in the past but, that’s unlikely. After all why would a tree demand a second thought from anyone ever, it’s just a tree after all. The square of tape on this tree is simply meant to draw attention so that someone will slow down enough to look at the tree and wonder. Then once someone thinks about that tree, actually sees, and experiences it, then it will be art. After the tape is taken away and the tree will stay but now that there isn’t something new and exciting to make people take note it will go back to being a simple unnoticeable tree. So that begs the question what the hell makes anything art? The answer is unsurprisingly, opinion, in other words you, you make art art. The nature of art is a bit confounding to say the least. After all art can be anything, to suggest anything less would imply that there is some objective measurable way to describe art, that art is intrinsic characteristic of the object or action. Saying art is objective is like saying opinions are facts, despite how vehemently some would argue to the contrary it’s simply not true. People judge what is art or not, individually as they experience the piece they determine whether something is worthy of being art, and if that particular piece can convince enough people that it’s worth being art then it takes on a life of its own and becomes art, truely. The allegory to answer runs parallel to a tree falling in the forest with no one to hear it. If a painting exists with no one to experience it, is it really art.
Zack’s art blog 