TreeTome
TreeTome (2019) was a temporary, site-specific sculpture installed at the Art-in-the-Park Biennial in Elm Park, Worcester, Massachusetts through September 8th, 2019. TreeTome was sited near the corner of Elm and Russell Streets to orient viewers towards the Olmstead designed open space and the woodlands of Newton Hill. This view emphasizes the entire 58.4 acres of public-access space. Notably historic, Elm Park is recognized as the first purchase of land for a public park in the United States.
2019
Public Art Installation
Wood, typewriter, weatherproof acrylic, mixed media
4’ x 15’ x 15’
TreeTome, installation view
is a site-specific public writing desk with a steel-bodied, manual typewriter, a green Smith Corona from the 1950s, that is permanently attached to a tree stump that morphs into a table. This sculpture incorporates “pages” of writing, seemingly swept by the wind. The pages, embedded in weatherproof acrylic, contain frozen moments—a birth, a death, the budding of a tree, the dissolution of a way of life. These pages scatter the desk as well as the ground near the sculpture. With this installation, we want to rebuild not the ghost of a tree, but the spirit of writing in conversation. Using cast words from established and emerging poets as our scattered sheets of “paper,” we hope to inspire and engage the community in celebrating writing.
TreeTome, a collaboration between sculptor Tracey Cockrell and writer M. C. Boyes,
Poets and poems included are:
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Additional writing:
Boys Whistling Like Canaries
Asleep in the Lightening Fields
The Circle Line
The Art Section, an interview with Jorn Ake -
Additional writing:
Ginkgo, Pigeon, Light: A Fable
The Way We Work -
Additional writing:
Registers of Illuminated Villages
Seam
Everything is Near and Unforgotten, an interview with Tarfia Faizullah -
Additional writing:
Footnotes in the Order of Disappearance
The Earth in the Attic
Alight
Textu -
Additional writing:
Third Voice
Ending in Planes
Goodbye Lyric: The Gigans and Lovely Gun
domina Un/blued
One Girl Babylon
When the Moon Knows You’re Wandering
Desdemona’s Fire -
Additional writing:
Holy Moly Carry Me
Copia
Makeshift Instructions for Vigilant Girls
Ideal Cities -
Additional writing
Thanksgiving at North Kirkwood Special School for Boys
Warrenton
To the Insurance Agent Who, In Denying Coverage, Explained That Everything Happens For a Reason -
Additional writing:
The Regret Histories
The Scenery of Farewell (and Hello Again)
For the Animal
Ornithologies
Illustrating the Machine that Makes the World
Meditations -
Additional writing:
Anthology of Appalachian Writers
Rain