Downtown

4,000 trees grow in Brooklyn

Brooklyn Artist to Build a Redwood Forest in Downtown Brooklyn

September 28, 2016 By Scott Enman Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Nature’s skyscrapers will be joining Downtown Brooklyn’s skyscrapers this weekend for Brooklyn artist Spencer Finch’s “Lost Man Creek,” a new public art exhibit that will recreate 790 acres of Redwood National Park in the heart of Brooklyn. Photos by Micah Bozeman, Courtesy Public Art Fund, NY
Share this:

Nature’s skyscrapers will be joining Downtown Brooklyn’s skyscrapers this weekend for local artist Spencer Finch’s “Lost Man Creek,” a new public art exhibit that will recreate — at a 1:100 scale — 790 acres of Redwood National Park in the heart of Brooklyn.

Redwoods are the world’s tallest trees, topping out at 380 feet. These massive trees can have diameters as wide as 24 feet, weigh as much as 1.6 million pounds and live to be 2,000 years old. And although these giants are indigenous to the West Coast, Finch will be bringing Brooklyn its very own redwood forest.

By  this Saturday, the artist will have planted 4,000 young dawn redwoods on the eastern triangular lawn of MetroTech Commons. While dawn redwoods are the smallest of three species of redwoods, they can still grow up to 100 feet in height. The trees in Finch’s installation will grow to be 1 to 4 feet.

Subscribe to our newsletters

Three dawn redwood trees were planted in the 1980s at Strawberry Fields in Central Park.

“Lost Man Creek,” which will be presented by the Public Art Fund and Forest City Ratner Companies, is free to the public and will be on view from Oct. 1 through March 11, 2018.

The display will have a footprint measuring 4,500 square feet.  Visitors can view the forest from a platform installed on one side of the exhibit or from the ground level, providing two unique perspectives.

The trees will, according to the Public Art Fund, thrive in the display thanks to a specific planting and irrigation system. The redwoods will be replanted following the conclusion of the exhibit.

“‘Lost Man Creek’ reflects Finch’s fascination with activating the imagination through observation of natural phenomena,” said Public Art Fund Director and Chief Curator Nicholas Baume. “For many years he has explored the ineffable qualities of our ever-changing natural world through wide-ranging mediums, but this is his first use of living trees.”

“Through both a scientific approach to gathering data — including precise measurements and record keeping — and a poetic sensibility, Finch’s works often inhabit the area between objective investigations of science and the subjectivity of lived experience,” said Associate Curator Emma Enderby.

“In a world where climate change is at the core of societal debates, Finch’s installation in the heart of one of the most urbanized neighborhoods of the city presents us with the universal reality of nature’s power to awe and inspire, and the importance to remember and protect such wonders,” Enderby added.

Public Art Fund is the same organization that brought the 5-foot-tall, 360-degree rotating sculpture that reads “Understanding” to Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Pier 6. That sculpture, from London-based artist Martin Creed, will be on display through Oct. 23.


Leave a Comment


Leave a Comment