Review

"Finite Radius: Our Ra Half-Life 1600 Tree Recorder," Mixed Media Installation.

Sarah Vandersall
Finite Radius: Our Ra Half-Life 1600 Tree Recorder
(Part of Happy Tree Friends II Group Show)

Noon-5 p.m.

Paragraph Gallery
23 E. 12th
Kansas City, MO
816.221.5115

Hours Noon-5 p.m., Thursdays and Saturdays
Runs through: June 4

Gallery Site: http://www.charlottestreet.org

For anyone who knows how to interpret them, a tree's rings are its biography.

This was a dry year. That one was wet. Fire, insects, trailblazing ... all leave their marks.

Sarah Vandersall imagines a wider range of information encoded in the wood. In this scenario, various devices record every interaction -- no matter how slight or fleeting -- between humans and trees. The plants, as it were, get help from artificial memory aids.

The scientific theories of observation and recording are so narrowly defined that only events, rather than experiences, are deemed worthy of note, Vandersall writes. If, however, we take a finite fact, like a tree's rings being evidence of the tree's molecular history, and push past the currently defined limitations, we could theorize that the tree is registering not just nutrients and climate but specific moments.

The visual expression of that natural philosophy is Vandersall's installation, Finite Radius: Our Ra Half-Life 1600 Tree Recorder. It's part of the second installment of Happy Tree Friends II, the Urban Culture Project's latest themed group show. The show also includes works by Kurt Flecksing, Hmh Services, Ke-Sook Lee, B.J Vogt and Chris Wildrick.

Vandersall's work is immediately to the right when you enter the front door of Paragraph Gallery. It's loaded with eye-grabbing visuals, although only one of those is readily identifiable. The concentric arrangement of arcs at the center of the piece clearly represents tree rings ... but what of the other elements, either appended to the trunk or orbiting it?

That, you'll have to find out for yourself -- with some assistance from the artist. Vandersall has provided a legend, copies of which can be found in a folder attached to the piece. You'll want to pick one up and study it closely. While Finite Radius more than holds its own visually, the text key adds a critical -- and wonderfully strange -- avant-pop element.

(It shouldn't be giving away too much to say that the list includes "Winter Sensor", "Wish for water" and "Ladder to human world." The box which holds copies of the key is itself on the legend, as -- of course -- "Maple box.")

Those instruments, combined with the information from the tree's rings, would provide data currently unavailable to science -- everything from the duration of a low-lying fog bank to the breaths of someone climbing the tree. In Vandersall's vision, With these combinations of man-made materials we can record this folding-over of expediental connections for a total Tree Experience, creating a complete Tree Record where the imprints explaining how we all fit into our world can be saved for later ...

Do trees have memories? It seems unlikely, without any structure analogous to the brain. It seems to be the lot of animals alone to bear bodily as well as mental reminders of certain experiences.

Vandersall's offbeat, oddly charming installation isn't likely to leave a physical mark. But given the time and attention it deserves, it's certain to create a lasting impression in any viewer's mental ring for 2009.