treesculpture – Wilf Thust

MY TREE sculpture

I used to run every morning up the hill towards the MOUNT WOOD,
a piece of land bought and maintained by a man who worked with the Scottish forestry commission.

The turning point for me
and for many walkers and family guests was the tree with its slim bending feature.

To my mind this tree had to stand up to more domineering fellows
in order to find a bit of light and recognition.
I somehow identified with the way it looked
poking through leaves into a gap in the sky.

The many times I turned there on my runs and later with my dog this elegantly lined tree looked the same and never changed.
It didn’t raise any new feelings in me. It remained to be a modest feature within this forest universe.

Then I wondered how strange it is to love and identify with this tree!?

Could any reader report on a similar experience?

In any case, during walks in the forest this event brought up a memory going back to my art teaching practice in the late 1960s when I persuaded pupils to build masks of their own faces with strips of brown sticky tape. An artist had made me aware of this casting practice.

I asked the parents for permission as I thought things could go wrong.

The students were about 15 or 16 years old. They needed to sit face to face with vaseline, a little bowl of water and in the end a hairdryer to separate the mask from their faces, quite a struggle as it turned out to be.
To assess the full success or failure we had to wait for a week depending on the school time table.

I did the same process much later in the 80s in a primary school in Hackney. The children were much younger and I had parents complaining. I must admit it was sensational but scary and dangerous to sensitive skin.

But looking at MY TREE in the 90s it came to me that I could treat the trunk like the making of masks I did with students. I could then take the cast home for more layers and make a partial replica !!!
The result would be a three dimensional reminder of this tree story for me and others.

In March 2014 my son and his wife helped me to realise this idea. We trouped uphill with a ladder, plaster bandage and a bucket and a glass of water and tools for scrubbing, brushing and surface cleaning for this operation.

Obviously I had to wait for a sunny day to do this. Then – on another day and on my own – I had to cut the whole piece into two vertical sections and bring them home to my studio. There I carried on to cover the plaster bandage with the brown glued paper roll and carried on as I did in my teaching practice.

For my own inspiration I add collections from my sketchbook and my photos

Surfaces of many tree trunks often show “rings”. It makes you think about the story of growing up.

In our forest I came across fallen trees after storms. They were cut into sections to make walking and driving possible.

A forest is never a static experience. These sections tell their story in layers.

It is important to me to come close to this in my work.

I dipped the paper into water and tapped it on in “rings” letting it dry in between and to slowly enhance the structure of the surface. It took days with many layers to achieve a hard skin and also to increase the folds and creases and to treat the inside and an additional hole.

The result is a very light weight but solid three dimensional hollow body. At first I hung it up, but then decided to lower this “pipe” onto a stick on a solid metal foot that allows viewers to turn this sculpture around if they want to.

But then, the whole piece can be taken out. It is easy to handle. I can carry it with me. My aversion to solid metal statues led me to this modest transportable creation that I can use like a three dimensional photo identity of MY TREE…