A Kinetic Sculpture that Highlights the Delicate Relationship Between Trees and Wildfires: John Grade’s Emeritus
Emeritus, a massive sculpture by John Grade is suspended in the heart of Oregon StateUniversity's Giant Sequoias.
This sculpture lets viewers glance vertically into the hollow, ghostly realm of an imagined fourth trunk, composed of tens of thousands of cast and carved pieces that reference the species' cones, needles, and branches.
John collaborates with his studio team to create immersive large-scale, site-specific installations that are inspired by changing geological and biological shapes and processes inthe natural world.
Emeritus, like many of Grade's works, is intended to live parallel to and be modified by our regional botanical ecology, which is regularly transformed by the action of rain, wind,insects, weather, and other influences.
Six climbers built the sculpture using arborist procedures that included no spurs, fasteners, or other components that could harm the Sequoias.
Climbers included John Grade, Yung- Hsiang (Sky) Lan, College of Agricultural Sciences Research Associate, and Leah Wilson, Artist-in-Residence at OSU's H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest.
A Giant Sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) in California's Sequoia National Park, estimated to be over 2,200 years old, is the world's largest known single-stemmed tree.