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Soon after I began sharing Lee Tracy's studio her project Red Trees, began to transform the space. I was working on a series of paintings based on the studio, which I called Enormous Room.
Lee had used a quarter mile of red fabric to cover the stumps of 300 trees from a clear-cut forest in Oregon. Her vision upon seeing a landscape of devastation in the natural world was to create an image that makes the visible understandable on an emotional level.
A year later, sap from the trees mixed with the sun, rain, and snow had given the individual impressions of the fallen tree, in flesh tones, on every red winding sheet. Each sheet was imbued with an image, like the shroud of Turin.
To expose the shrouds to the wind they were brought to Chicago. I painted the transformation of the space as the shrouds were made into flags for flying from the water tower. I painted the stainless steel spools of wire that would carry flags, and the shroud flags filling the space and reflected in the dark doorways of the future.
The twin towers of the doorways became a back ground for piles of red shrouds/flags that looked to me like red burkes, crouching before the doorways and getting ready. The worry of the world and the concern for the technical feat of putting sails on a water tower combined.
The shrouds and the daily choreography of people working on their transformation illuminated the enormous room. Each day volunteers came and began to count and sort, sew and mend, create piles and pierce with grommets, a mountain of red cloth.
My work began to abstract the process. I was documenting the celebration of the red tree, the paean to loss, the destruction of the built and natural environment and my own sense of being a witness to events that go on around me that I am powerless to effect.
The paintings were not meant to document the project, but they do. For me Red Trees, represents facing death and change and how human destructive and creative power is the alchemy that makes for unexpected change. And sometimes beauty.
Two paintings from the series of paintings called Shrouds are part of the Red Tree installation in the US Equities collection.
20" x 20", 2002 ©BCH
30" x 30", 2002 ©BCH
Collection of US Equities.
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40" x 30", 2002 ©BCH
Collection of US Equities.
30" x 40", 2002 ©BCH
30" x 30", 2002 ©BCH