BUTTERFLY EFFECT

found them as I was driving home one day. planted on an esplanade and struggling to stay alive. I called the City Forester and he informed me that the soil was too acidic for the Oaks, which were native to Louisiana. They were going to be removed and replaced with younger and better suited trees. I asked if I could have them. Twelve twenty foot tall trees were cut down.

Slaughter jumps into my head. animals hanging upside down - cattle. pigs. sheep. goats. - skinned, dead, lifeless. I think about the trees I have in my space. moved out of their natural environment. an attempt to grow them in a foreign environment. label them exotics. slowly poison them. I think about deforestation in the north. the west. the south. slaughter. no thought of the future. I decide to skin the trees. de-bark them. hang them upside down from meat hooks.

skinning proves to be a difficult and tedious task. lots of cuts and swollen fingers. I have a strange sensation when stripping the bark from the tree. pulling back the protection. exposing. beneath the bark the tree is white. beautiful. vulnerable. all are oaks except one holly.

the rusty steel hooks hang in the studio. lined up in a row. menacing. purchased them from a used equipment dealer for the butchery industry.

researching. read an article on Sarajevo - the war. it's victims. winter survival. the people make furnaces out of tin to warm themselves. the wood is obtained by cutting down the trees in the parks. I read, "the last nests disappear with the last trees".

I think to myself how we hate each other. tribal warfare.

separatists. intolerance. we listen to the news, read the paper and worry, feel pain for the human victims. human tragedies. and I think about the global effect of human action on every living thing. with every action there is a reaction. I decide to construct bird nests and place them on the floor beneath each hanging tree.

I play bird for several weeks. mud, clay, straw, rootlets, string, moss, lichen, feathers become my materials.

Michael and I talk about Chaos Theory. Randomness. A pattern which exists in that randomness. Butterfly Effect - notion that a butterfly stirring the air today in Peking can transform storm systems next month in New York. Everything intertwined - how humankind's hate. selfishness. affects it all.

I am walking in a forest in Canada and the smells are overwhelming. fresh. green. Cedar. Pine. I have a feeling of peace. calm.

Paradox - one walks into the installation and is struck visually with the vulnerability of trees hanging upside down. caught. trapped. underneath each tree displaced, thrown from their homes are bird nests, vulnerable in their exposure. lined up, regimented. suddenly specimens for a museum. lifeless. And faintly in the air - a scent of the forest. alive. thriving. memories.

- Jo Ann Fleischhauer 1994