Exterior Experience
Front of House - Zuzu, Lace and Found
Tree In the Yard - Hannah Beruskus
Embracing the End
Description:
Hand-tufted panels, acrylic, wool, 2022
NFS - Artist is open to commissions.
Austin's City Arborist Program helps keep Austin green by administering the City of Austin's Tree Ordinance, providing Austin with laws that protect many of our trees, and being raised in Houston, I greatly appreciate this and them. When I first came to the Here Today, Gone Tomorrow house to survey where I might be able to add something fun to its exterior space, I was immediately drawn to this tree with its two elongated trunks appearing to reach out as if longing to embrace something, someone, the sky. A dead stump and a lot of dead bark resided in its center creating two hollows that had collected much debris, and it seemed desperate for some love. I then learned that when the house is demolished, it would not be one of the saved trees but would also be, Gone Tomorrow. It was immediately decided, I am going to give this tree the glorious send-off it deserves. Playing off the concept of a Pheonix, death, and rebirth, I decided to create hand-tufted feather-shaped rugs that I hoped would appear as though the two trunks were evolving, being reborn from the earth. The rug placed around the base of the tree is meant to be a call-back to the paint adorning the walls of the house, the life's blood of many of the artists, and the newly reborn tree spilling out as it ascends, embracing its end.
Every part of prepping for this installation was an approximation. Getting accurate measurements of such shapes would require much math, and I do not math, much. Thankfully rug tufting is fairly forgiving. I used newsprint to make paper patterns of the tree's base and hollows, cutting them into pieces that I could then transfer to the primary tufting cloth once stretched onto my frame. Each feather was hand-tufted and cut out after gluing the edges. Taking into account the installation would live outdoors, I used waterproof latex glues for only the edges of the rug pieces. I wanted to allow rain to be able to go through the material so that 1.) The tree and ground would not be starved of water, and 2.) so that the water would not pool and mildew in the rug. This decision, though, had a very exciting and special surprise for me! After being installed for about a week and a half, and the rain we have thankfully had during that interim, I found small grass shoots had begun to grow up through the rug! Nature finds a way. I have read covering trees with fiber during the winter months helps provide places for bugs to burrow and bed, rather than into the tree, protecting the tree. Though this tree seems to be not doing so well, I hope that my piece will provide it with some comfort in its last days.
Materials used in this piece will be recycled or reused upon the project's close.
Left Side Exterior - .Paste and Matt Tru Mural KB Contractors providing Landscaping
More information on the piece coming soon.
