A trunk in pieces. Kiss Cuts, 2018

©Madelon Galland, “Baiser sur Blessure” (Kiss Cut), 2018

I completed this new site specific work for the bi-annual sculpture show in St Ambroix, Printemps de la Sculpture . And it is from the invitation to participate in this show, with the Stump Project, that I was motivated to create this website/blog as a companion site and to give historical context to the work I am showing there.

On May 19th, 2018 I will be doing a demonstration/action at the location La Maison Guiraud from 2pm – on an enormous uprooted stump. Come watch and learn if you are in the area!

Once upon a time…

©Madelon Galland, Big Tree Little Stump, Memphis, TN 2002

 

The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstien left an irreparable impression on me since childhood. I adored the story but always felt sad and unresolved at its ending.  It wasn’t until I began to notice all the tree stumps in my neighborhood of the East Village in NYC, that a direct response occurred to me, upholster the blighted stump!  Honor her, put her on the radar like a roadside shrine, an homage to her pith.

I was soon to be between studios at the time and doing something on the street became my public studio and a way in which I could subvert the normal  and staid avenues of exhibition opportunity.  Many things came together that made this intervention completely obvious to me and necessary.  There was the blight, there was the frame, there was the ambiguity of responsablity, there was the beloved story still worn in my heart, there was a solution to help the tree stump perk herself up, there was the wonderful absurdity and interaction with the public, the going against the grain that invigorated me, the standing still in the current of city life, and the humility of getting on my knees in the sidewalks of New York, to clean away the garbage and cigarette buts and in what I felt as a caring act of upholstering these tree stumps, put them on our radar and illuminate the way in which we love and use nature to its nub.

Under the radar

©Madelon Galland, Times Square Stump, 2000

Introduction/ Inspiration

The STUMP project began in 1999 on the sidewalks of New York City. The sidewalk plots where there are tree stumps are generally neglected spaces left to collect debris. Seeing the tree stump recalled a childhood story, The Giving Tree by Shell Silverstein, in which a tree has given of herself to the point of being diminished to a stump, but selflessly perks herself up to give to the last, by providing a seat for the beloved boy who is now an aged man. To upholster the sidewalk stump was a way to honor that which had been diminished, and bring it back into relationship with the neighborhood. I am interested by what happens in a public space when I demonstrate care for something which is not “mine”. I am still motivated to respond to the world in this way and am frequently nursing sick street dogs. To kneel down to the disparaged has been a tremendous opportunity for opening the heart. And it addresses the displaced and reductive state of our relationship to nature in an urban environment, or any civilized society. Wherever upholstering a tree stump is sited, it speaks to our relationship with what has been cast off and it is an activation and sublimation of dejected forms and neglected spaces.

©Madelon Galland, Ramapo 4, 2001

Why upholster a tree stump?

In cities frequently there are stumps along the sidewalks, trees that have been cut down due to disease or vehicular damage, or nearby development. Once you begin looking I think you will find them ubiquitous, in city or countryside. And once a tree stump is upholstered, stump awareness begins to flourish. This really began as unauthorized public art, and is not intended as something to have, but rather as a gesture to give. The street stumps are anchored and framed with firm roots and city masonry as they are, and what I do is contribute, care, and dignify that which has been diminished thus giving vitality again to spaces usually below the pedestrian radar. Working in the urban areas is quite easy because these small sidewalk plots, where the tree stumps are found, have an ambiguous jurisdiction and allow for engaged activity without provoking upset, only occasional curiosity. I tend to act more spontaneously and from a perspective that where something is obviously blighted, one shouldn’t have to ask permission to care.  Engaging to care for something in public space is a radical gesture indeed; it changes our measurement of responsibility into more simply, the ability to respond.

 

Installation

 

 

©Madelon Galland, Closet Installation, ABC No Rio, NYC, 2000

This was a floor to ceiling upholstered, rescued “weed tree” installation at Abc No Rio’s Ides of March show.  They had cut it from their yard as it was a weed, and I quickly decided it was my project for the show. It later transformed into  a 14′ high installation at my MFA Thesis show at Hunter College.

 

 

homeless tree

©Madelon Galland, Homeless Tree, Hell’s Kitchen 2002

 

I found this uprooted tree in a parking lot, under an overpass in Hell’s Kitchen, NYC. Nearby were empty sleeping bags, bottles and debris,  and I was moved to drag this tree into my studio and cover it in felt, rubbing it head to toe, trunk and root, in hot soap to matte the wool fibers around its cold corpse and then I placed it back to where it lay.  Years later, watching  “In the Cut” by Jane Campion…I recognized it in the titles intro,  it made a blurry cameo appearance.  This is not a place of pedestrian traffic, but someone had seen it and was moved to film it, and that’s the kind of clue I love that something binds us together in this great big messy world.

 

Manifesto 1999

                                             by Madelon Galland, December 13, 1999

The changes we have witnessed in this century promise to evolve at an even greater speed as the volume of the world collapses under the reach of globalization and technological herding. Under the acceleration of commodification in late capitalism, in which all forms of opposition are absorbed, co-opted and commodified to the point of dissolution, we stand at the brink of the 21st century; dispossessed of any authenticity, integrity, power or even recourse to the “self”. The disparity created when care has been assigned an exchange value, when productivity and net worth stand as the guage of human accomplishment, and distance masks itself as proximity, magnifies the fact of our impotence and alienation.  Co-opted as we are by the roles we play for our survival, the self reveals itself as merely a fractured lineage of imposters, each catering to the specified expectation of roles imposed from without: daughter, sister, worker, boss, taxpayer, consumer, teacher, student, friend, lover, patient, client, neighbor, landlord, tenant, victim, perpetrator, biological being, thinking being, doing being, artist.

Art must resonate with the discord of being. Art should reek of the agitation from which it arises. The dilemma of permissiveness in art at this time in history proves how capitalism has been reified in the individual, making all radical gestures mute. We have been robbed of the illusion of originality, and integrity has become obsolete. How do we proceed when there is no edge to push against? We proceed by investigation, by the humble awareness and full immersion into this disparity. Contradiction is unavoidable and should be itself appropriated to compound the fact of our dispossession.   Steeped in the residue of this theft we can imagine a space uninhabited by commodity colonialism, even if only by pointing to its absence. It is this absence that art should extend to the world , make both palpable and intangible, a boundless arena for contemplation and impenetrable to claims of ownership.