Saturday, March 1, 2008

Living tree sculpture aka arborscupture






Oh WOW! This is about the coolest stuff I have seen about gardening ever. This is something I'd just love to do if I had the land to do it on. Very, very cool. Check out the sites, please!!!

The last image is a Ficus House on Okinawa at this site: http://www.arborsmith.com There are many more very cool pictures there.

The other three images are from: http://www.pooktre.com

This is what their site says. They are from Australia.
In 1986 Peter had the idea of growing a chair. Nine years later Peter & Becky became partners. Pooktre was born. Together they have mastered the art they call Pooktre, which is the shaping of trees as they grow in predetermined designs. Some are intended for harvest to be high quality indoor furniture and others will remain living art.

3 comments:

Irish Eyes said...

Oh I see I spelled arborsculpture wrong. I just hate it when I spell things wrong, but to fix it I'd have to delete the post and do it all over again, so it stays. Just note, it should be ARBORSCULPTURE. lol. Irish Eyes

Anonymous said...

Hi,
This is Becky from Pooktre. There are a few misunderstandings. None of tree were shaped using arborsculpture technique these photos are of Richard's work. They all belone to someone else.
Our trees are not arbor sculpture they are shaped trees. There are many different people around the world who shape trees and all of them have they own name for what they do.
Richard has been really important as a focus point for the art form but he does not know how or why trees do what they do. He is on the path but he still hasn't grown an balanced piece. Richard has said in his own book that all his trees are experiments. Which means he has been unable to recreate his own work. Another thing is, we believe that the way Richard shapes trees is too damaging and leads to unpredictable results. Which is the reason that we don't wish to have our work confused with arbor sculpture.
Unlike some tree shaping processes, the Pooktre process is repeatable. With our techniques we know what will work or not and we can reproduce any of our pieces. Which we have done with our favorites. Pooktre only relates to our techniques, in short we have mastered the art of Pooktre.
We were invited to be the featured artists at the Growing Village World Expo 2005 in Aichi Japan. When in Japan we were told that arbor sculpture does not translate. In Japanese it means to crave away, not shape. At earlier time Richard had grown some trees in Japan which hadn't worked out that well. We were asked if we wish to have the whole art form called Pooktre or Circus Trees. We felt that as Axel N. Erlandson had done his trees first and well, that we where happy to have our trees associated with his. So in Japan at the Expo the trees were call Circus trees. We are quite happy to have our trees associated with people that have masted their art. Example Krubsack who grow a chair on his first try or with Chis Cattle who has masted that way he shapes the trees and is able to reproduce the same design again and again. Which means he has a understanding of how and why the design works.
Becky

Anonymous said...

Hi,
This is Becky from Pooktre. There are a few misunderstandings.
None of these pieces use arborscuplture technique.
Our trees are not arbor sculpture they are shaped trees. There are many different people around the world who shape trees and all of them have they own name for what they do.
Richard has been really important as a focus point for the art form but he does not know how or why trees do what they do. He is on the path but he still hasn't grown an balanced piece. Richard has said in his own book that all his trees are experiments. Which means he has been unable to recreate his own work. Another thing is, we believe that the way Richard shapes trees is too damaging and leads to unpredictable results. Which is the reason that we don't wish to have our work confused with arbor sculpture.
Unlike some tree shaping processes, the Pooktre process is repeatable. With our techniques we know what will work or not and we can reproduce any of our pieces. Which we have done with our favorites. Pooktre only relates to our techniques, in short we have mastered the art of Pooktre.
We were invited to be the featured artists at the Growing Village World Expo 2005 in Aichi Japan. When in Japan we were told that arbor sculpture does not translate. In Japanese it means to crave away, not shape. At earlier time Richard had grown some trees in Japan which hadn't worked out that well. We were asked if we wish to have the whole art form called Pooktre or Circus Trees. We felt that as Axel N. Erlandson had done his trees first and well, that we where happy to have our trees associated with his. So in Japan at the Expo the trees were call Circus trees. We are quite happy to have our trees associated with people that have masted their art. Example Krubsack who grow a chair on his first try or with Chis Cattle who has masted that way he shapes the trees and is able to reproduce the same design again and again. Which means he has a understanding of how and why the design works.
Becky