Diversitree was commissioned by Thompson River’s University for their new Early Childhood Education Center. The ECEC is actually a new face on what was once a ginseng warehouse. In line with the face lift and re-purposing that the building was receiving I wanted to create a piece that reflected themes of growth and diversity.
Depicting a tree with multiple different grafted branches and inhabitants, set against the backdrop of a sky in transition from day to night was meant to tell a story in still life. Firstly the tree resembles shelter and a home to the various birds scattered across the mosaic. In the transition from day to night I wanted to embody the growth and change we as people go through, and finally the various grafted species celebrates the coming together of diverse groups to create a cohesive and vibrant whole.
For my 2019 piece “Community Confluence,” I had developed a method for creating aluminum mosaic tiles that link into webnetting, creating very large artwork while remaining lightweight and durable. For this project I was able to return to this design and use tiles that hadn’t ended up in that project. An innovation I brought to Diversitree was a method that fastens large aluminum cut outs to create the leaves and bark pattern.
A big Thank you to Thompson River’s University, Kamloops Powder Coating, ANR Construction, and LN group for helping me bring Diversitree to life!
Specifications:
Diversitree is displayed on a large length of web-netting 124 feet wide and 12 feet tall framed along it’s length by aluminum square tubing fastened with stainless steel wire crimped with copper ferrules. approximately 4500 tiles and hundreds of custom cut pieces of 5052 aluminum create the mosaic.