ARTWORK > Unchopping a Tree

Unchopping a Tree is a series of environmental artworks inspired in part by the W.S. Merwin prose poem Unchopping a Tree. In the writing, the author gives instructions for putting back together a tree that has been cut down, an impossible task. The written description becomes a metaphor for human intervention into the landscape, the ecology of natural systems, and our impact on the natural world. What we have taken away or altered can rarely, if ever, be replaced or repaired to its original state.