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Architecture and City Planning Sculpture and Installations Garden and Landscape Smith's vision of the body as a fluid vehicle for intimating life - and death - suggested the School of Medicine as fertile territory for Standing, her Stuart Collection project. From the beginning her ideas evolved in relation to the site between the Medical Teaching Facility and the Basic Sciences Building amidst eucalyptus trees, sloping lawns and curving pathways. Smith's original idea of a figure on a classical column soon evolved to become a figure on a cast tree trunk. A dead tree was located on campus, removed and delicately cast at San Diego Pre-Cast Concrete. So refined is the casting that it has captured the network of beetle trails that once lay under the thin eucalyptus bark -- a feature that originally drew Smith's interest. The paths of these insects, which may have played a role in the tree's death, evoke notions of veins and capillaries; the trunk's artery-like roots reach into the water below. Stripped of its bark and exposed through time and decay, it is remarkable in the way that it calls out the live eucalyptus around the site, thus embracing - even composing - the entire area. Pathways were reconfigured and added by the artist to extend the arterial imagery. UC San Diego Library, UC San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0175 (https://library.ucsd.edu/dc/contact) Medical Teaching Facility: University of California, San Diego; La Jolla, California, United States
Type
image
Format
Bronze figure with cast concrete column, rocks, and water; bronze figure: 4 feet 10 inches high; concrete tree: 12 feet 6 inches tall; pool: 13 feet in diameter
Form/Genre
site-specific works casts (sculpture) courtyards sculpture (visual work) public art outdoor sculpture landscape architecture nudes (representations) sculpture gardens bronzes (objects) fountains paths public sculpture
Identifier
ark:/20775/bb66569266
Language
No linguistic content
Subject
Columns (architectural elements) Monuments Anatomy Eucalyptus American Trees Feminism Human body Women artists Death Water Heads Faces Contemporary University of California, San Diego--History Site-specific works Casts (sculpture) Courtyards Sculpture (visual work) Public art Outdoor sculpture Landscape architecture Nudes (representations) Sculpture gardens Bronzes (objects) Fountains Paths Public sculpture Smith, Kiki (American artist, 1954 AD -)
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