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Hollow (Katie Paterson, 2016, wood)
A lot of conceptual art strikes me as being perhaps a bit [cough] lazy. The concept is forced to stand in for the elegance and beauty of masterful craft. But here is a sculpture where the concept and the craft are both amazing: the work doubles as a lovely artwork and as a story of truly ecumenical breadth. The synthesis is sublime. This is “Hollow” a 2016 sculpture by the Berlin-based Glaswegian artist Katie Paterson.
“Hollow” is a folly grotto in the historic Royal Fort Gardens of Bristol. It looks a bit like a wooden megalith from the outside, but inside it becomes a magical proliferation of thousands of rectangular solids made of wood which give the simultaneous effect of a comfortable wooden grotto and an otherworldly scene from religion or abstract mathematics. The rectangular shapes are all wood and all clearly belong together. Yet the pieces are all different colors, densities and textures because they represents all trees…ever.
Paterson traveled the world gathering more than 10,000 samples of every known species—from trees young and old; from taxa alive and those long extinct. There are petrified remnants of the first forests which sprang up 390 million years old, and bits of the horsetails which preceded those. There are slivers of genera long gone, which now exist only as rare museum specimens. There are pieces of historically significant trees like “Methusela” the oldest known Bristlecone pine…and from clonal colony giants like Pando. There are also hunks of historically meaningful trees like a surviving gingko from Hiroshima, the Fortingall Yew, and suchlike. There are human stories aplenty, but they are dwarfed and transcended by the majesty of arboreal diversity and development through the ages.
The piece is indeed hollow and it is illuminated only by the Earth’s sun, as is entirely proper for a piece about trees (which live even more in tandem with our star, than other life forms—though each living thing depends on it). We humans come from an arboreal order, and the worship of trees is nearly universal (sacred trees sprout up up even in hardnosed monotheistic faiths like Islam and Christianity) yet trees are so much older than us…or even than mammals. The full story of trees exists in deep time which is difficult to comprehend in a meaningful way. “Hollow” is a microcosmic sculpture which endeavors to present a sliver of this complexity. The work succeeds in enshrining both the abstruse sacred quality of trees and the real nature of their diversity and long history here on Earth.
Vamlingbo Church (mid 13th century, photo by photographer Olivia Wittberg)
Gotland is the largest island in the Baltic Sea. It is culturally and politically part of Sweden (although it has ancient ties to Denmark, Norway, Germany, Poland, Russia, and lands beyond). Many historians believe the Goths, the tribe of invaders which sacked Rome, originated from Gotland (a story which will have to wait for another post). The main town of Gotland is Visby, the city of roses and ruins, which was a principal port of the Hanseatic League. Gotland is scattered with strange ancient rune stones (some of which are graven with valknuts) and ancient hidden treasure hordes, but todays post concerns the island’s 94 medieval churches. These buildings executed in the Romanesque and Gothic architectural style are one of the Island’s top tourist draws.
Anga Church (13th Century)
The Romanesque churches of Gotland were built between 1150–1250 AD. Then the style switched to Gothic from 1250 to 1400 AD (nearly a millennia after the original Goths began to cause unrest in the northern provinces of the Roman empire). The era of church building was a golden age for Gotland which grew rich from Baltic trade. Priest, sailors, merchants, bankers, fishermen, architects, monks, and all manner of other folk walked the thriving streets of Visby. Many of the churches remain (though many have been rebuilt) and their elegant architecture provides a window to the vanished medieval world. Here is a little gallery of some of the churches of Gotland. If you are wildly curious about any particular building you can visit this site for a more comprehensive explanation.
Atlingbo Church
Kräklingbo Church
Fårö Church
Garde Church (built originally in the mid-1100s)
Ala Church was originally built in the 12th century
Lärbro Church (Mid 13th Century)
Slanga Church
När Church (photo by Swedish National Tourist Board)
Ruins of St. Nicolai, Visby
Väte Church (14th century)
Träkumla Church
Fröjel Church (photo by Helen Simonsson)
Aren’t they beautiful? I am sorry that I could not find the names of a couple of churches, but there is a “find the six differences” aspect to this group of images which I didn’t appreciate at first. I was hoping to make this an easy Friday post, but I have been trapped at my computer comparing the slants of steeples and the shape of windows. I’ll leave you with a little picture of the gorgeous cathedral at Visby and let you look for the rest of the churches of Gotland on your own!
Visby Cathedral
“Declaration of Independence” by John Trumbull
Independence Day Celebration in Centre Square, Philadelphia, a depiction of the celebrations of July 4th 1819, painted in 1819 by John Lewis Krimmel (a German-American immigrant painter active in Pennsylvania during the 1810’s.)
A Cartoon Depicting 4th of July Celebrations in 1837 (with Strong Beverages and Speechifyin’)
The Cover of Harper’s Magazine on the Fourth of July of 1865 (just after the Civil War ended)
1876 Picture of the Centennial Celebration of the Fourth of July. Beautifully engraved image titled,” The Glorious Day We Celebrate,” drawn by Thomas Worth from Harper ’s Weekly.
July 4th, 1905 in Marine on St. Croix, Minnesota
Watching Fireworks on the Fourth: Coney Island, 1962
New York Harbor: Fourth of July, 1976
Army Camp Joyce Afghanistan with a historic American flag flown there on July 4th, 2007
Fireworks on the Hudson River, New York, New York, 2009
ferrebeekeeper 