It’s standard practice to cut down living trees and make them into painted fences or decorated trinket boxes, but rare to leave a dead tree standing and turn it into sculpture.
When it became clear that Bill Taylor’s old juniper tree had started to give up the ghost, the slowly emerging snag seemed destined for a stumpery – a quirky kind of log pile. Offers to ‘helpfully’ tidy it up came from around the neighbourhood, but Bill politely demurred. He had another notion.
The tree’s limbs naturally intertwined at ground level and lengthened into gracefully expressive forms. Bill painted each limb a bold colour, switching shades higher in the branches to create a blocky pattern.
The textures of the finished sculpture are subtle and interesting. The juniper snag provides gnarls, sinews and ripples. Sun and rain are already working their magic, so the colours are washed and underlying contrasts revealed.
When asked if he’d named it, Bill said it did originally have a name: Angst 2020, he thought, or something similar. Viewed upwards (as above) or sideways on (as in the second picture), I can sense some of that feeling. It’s one of many projects carried out worldwide when our social spheres had shrunk and we were left with our own imaginative resources.
My favourite shot of Bill’s sculpture is this moody one, taken in late afternoon when the light was languid, where the painted tree seems to be reaching out to the living trees around it.
Whether or not seeing this lifts your day, as it does mine, Bill is certainly doing his bit to Keep Fondren Funky, a local project designed to free the people who live in this artsy neighbourhood to do their own thing.
Shared for Marsha and Cee’s Public Art Challenge.
Susan Rushton 
I love this fun, funky art!
Me too! My eyes are primed to appreciate colour after a northern winter.
I’ve never seen this before, Susan. Love this, and wish we’d adopt such strategies around here because there are a lot of dead trees that could use new lives as art.