Lumberjack's Folly

Linus Gelber

The huge stainless-steel tree sculptures planted in Madison Square Park are a real delight. It's my first time seeing the new seasonal guests by artist Roxy Paine. This is a segment of Conjoined, a snarled serpentine piece in which two trees join and twine in the air above a quiet lawn. The sculpted trees are 40 feet high and their branches are bare, and the effect is almost liquid as the paired limbs stretch and swoop and then ground again in the body of the opposite trunk.

Against a backdrop of leaf-and-wood trees, the metal ones are graceful and alien mimics.

I'm out of town until next Wednesday; more shots of the stainless steel trees and the surrounding Thursday Walk will have to wait until my return. Meantime, you can check out more of this particular Thursday on Utata.

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