|
 |
|
|
| As a woodworker who took up photography, I
was mildly amused a year or two ago as I was looking through my photos. I
realized that of all the photographic subjects I've come across, including
cars, people, architecture, landscapes, etc., trees are one of the single
most fascinating subjects I have ever seen.
(You can see some
of my pics here, in one of my other galleries.)
|
 It's not just because I work with wood for
a hobby and as a part-time living. I'm not photographing the wood so much
as the shapes, textures, and colors of the trees, both living and dead. Their
beauty to me is not only drawn from their potential as a medium in which
to create our own version of beauty, but also from their combination of opposing,
but balanced forces: strength and delicacy, symmetry and asymmetry, order
and randomness, earth and sky, life and death. |
Even looking at wood under the microscope, I see beauty. This time, it's not such an esoteric, spiritual beauty. This time, the beauty is the mathematical perfection, the supreme elegance, of a superbly designed machine. The design of the vessels that act as the tree's plumbing system, pumping water from the roots 200+ feet into the air; using no moving parts, no energy to speak of, just the principles of capillary action and osmosis. The design of the xylem's cellular structure, a material that has yet to be surpassed as a lightweight, yet strong and flexible, fire resistant, often insect and decay resistant construction material. Perfect to get those leaves high in the air, so they can be the first and the last to catch the sunlight. All made from little more than carbon dioxide and water. And when it has finished serving its purpose, it becomes food and home to countless fungi, insects, and other fauna.
|
Just looking at a tree, there is no doubt that this is the product of supreme engineering; a stand-alone component that is also designed to be a part of a much larger, fully integrated, self sustaining system of life. Each component in the system relies on one or more of the others in order to function, yet each component is also nearly always independent of the others, and can continue to function despite the loss of one or two of them. Earth’s biosphere is a self-sustaining system with multiple levels of buffering, error correction, and redundancy to ensure its continued function over very long periods of time, despite cosmic, geologic, and human disruptive forces. Our best engineers and brightest scientists still cannot dream of ever being able to actually create a functioning system of comparable complexity and perfection.
|
As I came first from an engineering and science background, I appreciate that even the most simple living organism is far too complex to have been created by random coincidence. The probability of forming a living cell of even the simplest form purely by chance events is so astronomical that given one try per second since the universe is supposed to have been formed, there still hasn't been enough time for such an event to be considered "likely" by probabilistic analysis. Not to mention the fact that one of the fundamental laws of physics, the second law of thermodynamics, prohibits such an occurrance.
|
Having switched from being an engineering to a fine arts major, I also appreciate the fact that truly random events very seldom create anything like what most would consider beautiful. The artist thinks consciously, and "feels," (read that as "thinks unconsciously"), then composes his or her art. Artistic design is same design as that of engineering, but with "fuzzy logic," intuitive leaps, four or more dimensions, and a bit of quantum physics that we don't even understand yet. The random-yet-ordered branching of a tree is not dissimilar to the branching and re-branching fractal patterns of mathematics, yet whether it is symmetrical or asymmetrical, the natural branched structure of a tree always seems to obtain a delicate balance and beauty that can be very difficult to reproduce on paper or canvas as an abstract, without actually copying a form from nature. Again, the multi-layered, interlocking cellular structure of wood reflects the latest advancements in lightweight, extremely strong materials, yet the natural grain patterns, colors, luminosity and depth of real, un-stained wood have yet to be reproduced by synthetic means.
|
|
For me, there is no doubt, as a scientist or as an artist, that a tree is the product of an exceedingly intelligent design, and as such, is truly a thing of beauty.
*** |
| If it's too small, use Bondo. If it's too big, use a belt sander.
If it moves and it shouldn't, use epoxy. If the above doesn't help, build
a bonfire with it and make s'mores! {|;-) David |
A tree is a machine:
And a tree is art:
Perhaps it is because we
find them so useful, or perhaps because they are fellow living things, but
our brains seem to be universally wired in such a way as to find great beauty
in trees, as in nature in general. In contrast, much of the “art”
that I find least appealing (or most distasteful) comes from artists who
are, apparently, least in touch with nature: living in (often blighted) urban
areas, surrounded by the products of mechanized human industry and corrupt
society, insulated even from the atmosphere by their climate-controlled
surroundings – quite isolated from anything that is natural and unspoiled
by careless human influence. I do often enjoy certain examples of this
“urban” art for the way it often reflects my own all-to-urban existence
in its degree of dissonance, its overlapping and mixing of many, often dissimilar
themes or influences; and its general recognition and reflection of many
aspects of urban life. However, I always find myself most attracted to the
harmonies of nature, the “music of the spheres,” and the balance
and proportion created without human hands.
