Trying To Put It All Back Together Again
Two douglass fur studs taken from my home and joined together in an attempt to recreate the length of the original Douglass Fir Tree*. I live in a Victorian home in San Francisco, and I think often of the legacy of these homes, mostly built in the decades just after the gold rush, and the subsequent mass deforestation, attempted genocide, and the wholesale destruction of so many multi species homes that occurred in building these homes (and what is now my home). Because of the current real-estate gold rush, many of these Victorians are being quickly renovated and so the ancient trees cut down only a hundred years ago to build them are being sent to landfill. While these trees had a long life growing (though cut short), and will have a long life in landfill— it is interesting to me that their use value under a capitalist time frame has been considerably shorter (only a century in this case). The studs are joined with a Kintsugi* join that is made from inherited family gold jewelry which has been melted down and pounded. The join is failing here, slumping in the center, which feels evocative of this work and the challenges it is working through.