Tree of Fish
Current Artist: Jason Oliver
Master artist: Robin Wright
Ideas:
The focus of my art portfolio this year is self-sabotage. In the first art piece I worked on with Jack Lord, I wanted to start broad. So I asked myself in what ways the human race has sabotaged itself. In my environmental science class, my question was answered. The biggest way that humans sabotage themselves is by treating the earth unsustainably. So we decided to create an art piece that represents unsustainable agriculture. Jack and I created a wire tree on top of a stone. Each tree branch is attached to a fishing line with a wire fish caught on the end. The tree and fish demonstrate to the audience how overfishing does not only negatively impact fish populations but also negatively affects all ecosystems that we rely on.
Materials:
The Tree of Fish is created with silver 16 gauge wire, Granite Stone, silver 28 gauge wire, and light green thread. The tree itself is made of 16 gauge silver wire. We chose 16 gauge because a local wire artist named Jason Oliver recommended this wire thickness to us. 16 gauge wire has substantial mass, but it is able to be shaped with pliers and wire cutters. We chose silver over copper/gold wire because silver wire gives our tree an older naked look compared to gold which is associated with riches and light. After many, many different rocks, we chose the basalt rock because the wire roots fit around the rock without falling. Basalt is formed from cooled magma. The wire for our fish matched the wire for our tree, but the 28 gauge wire was easier to shape, which was essential for creating the details on our fish. The thread we used was subtle, so our fish are clearly hanging, but they still look as if they are floating in the ocean.
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Process:
We experimented with many designs for the trunk and concluded that a trunk with intertwined wires created the right depth. We created about 3 mock-ups of the tree itself where we used different colors of wire, different thicknesses, and different rocks. This also presented a large problem because their size had to be proportional to our tree. At first, we created paper fish however the paper and wire combination proved to be too difficult to size down and looked out of place hanging from the tree. We eventually created skeletal fish outlines out of wire which matched the size of the tree and fit in with the color scheme of the silver wire.
