Artist Joan Backes stands under a 12 feet high tree in Dean Jensen Gallery. The nature inspired installation fills the entire back gallery room, the branches bare and waiting for leaves to fill the tiny holes in the upper tree, where Backes will place her collected foliage. Multifarious leaves in vibrant multi-colors to illustrate the installation's title: Multi-Species Tree. By Gallery Night, the leaves fitted into their minute holes, and the tree indeed leafed out, and appeared as a completely different installation, much like the trees in Spring, budding from the winter's sleep in April
Dean Jensen premieres the life size tree in a complete exhibition/installation that opened Spring Gallery Night titled "Joan Backes Murmurs In The Trees." An entire exhibition focused around nature, nurtured from a Milwaukee childhood spent in the Wisconsin Northwoods where Backes was born and raised or vacationed during the summer. These beginnings inhabit all her artwork, and remain ever the same since the day she graduated from the MFA program at Northwestern University in painting.
The past 20 years Backes journeys along with her expanding artwork, all over the world. Always working tirelessly to install her unusual houses and trees through exhibitions and permanent sculptures in Bangkok (Thailand), Edinburgh (Scotland), Iceland, Finland, Germany and Sweden. While based on America's East coast, Backes enjoys spending time in Milwaukee where she still has family and friends to welcome her home. Even while preparing for the upcoming exhibition, which includes the Paper House (2007), Backes smiles and enthusiastically speaks to the "art of making art" or how the Multi-SpeciesTree came to be standing in Dean Jensen Gallery this April.
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What inspired you to create this particular tree?
I had made trees in Bangkok [an installation] along with a bamboo house that were permanent structures for an atrium in an art building. Those three trees were stark and bony with no leaves. I view all my work as a progression, which builds upon what comes before. So this tree came from those trees. But I wanted this one to be more childlike and colorful.
How long did it take you to complete this tree?
I started the tree in 2009 and recently finished it for this show. I often do paintings taken from the bark of trees [also in this exhibition], and find everyone has there favorite tree. An instructor told me ideas really are the easiest part of art. It's constructing them to make them happen, reality, that requires the hardest work. To begin with, the entire tree is made from recycled wood, from different construction sites that I gathered all by myself. Some is from an exterior construction site in Boston, others came from dumpster diving, and I remember some came from Providence [Rhode Island]. A family was remodeling and left some outside, and we went up to the door, explained what we were doing, and asked if we could take some of their old wood to use. It's all put together in this tree.
And then you constructed the tree?
You fit all the pieces together, and I'm very proud of the hole [Backes points to a tiny, rectangular opening in the trunk]. It's like a bruise, or wound, where a branch might have fallen off. Everything is numbered, so when you put the tree together, you know where everything goes. Then the tree is crated up, and moved across the country in a large van to be set up here. And of course after the exhibition we take it all apart again, crate it up, and move it back home.
What did you feel while you created this tree?
I wanted to use leaves from all different species [of trees], with all different colors [of leaves]. And when I use the recycled wood, these cast offs from construction, I feel like I'm returning the wood to its original state. I was taught throughout my childhood to be observant and aware of birds, plants, nature. Nature was at the forefront in my childhood. I was born in Milwaukee and grew up in Wisconsin and took many classes at the Milwaukee Art Museum. My parents knew I liked art and let me enjoy it. The nature I learned and studied here is all here [in my art], and all I've ever worked from.
Dean Jensen Gallery presents the exhibition "Joan Backes Murmurs In The Trees" through May 28 with a small catalogue is available for purchase at the gallery. View the artwork at www.deanjensengallery.com or www.joanbackes.com
