Transforming Trees in Nashville’s Parks

The Nashville Tree Project was started in 2022 when the Nashville Metro Parks Department was faced with the question of what to do with thousands of trees that had been infected with the Emerald Ash Borer, an invasive insect encouraged by climate change that will kill ~10% of Nashville’s trees in the next 5 years. Modeled after the Chicago Tree Project, artists turn selected ash tree trunks in Metro Parks across Nashville into works of art, giving some of these sick and dying trees a second life as a work of vibrant public art.

Artists have addressed the trees in a variety of methods, with traditional  carving and various media that have been integrated into the trees. The resulting tree sculptures have been wide ranging in subject matter as  well, addressing scientific, spiritual and environmental themes. These sculptures offer unique and often unexpected encounters for visitors to Nashville parks. As long as they remain secure, the transformed trees remain standing.

About the organizations involved: Founded in 1986, the Nashville Tree Foundation works to preserve and enhance Nashville’s urban forests by planting trees in urban areas, identifying the oldest and largest trees in Davidson County, and educating the public about the value of trees. This collaborative project between the Nashville Metro Parks and NTF builds on the city’s reputation for great public art. It expands the reach of public art in Nashville by  bringing sculpture to geographically diverse neighborhoods throughout the city.  Also, what started out as a local endeavor has now become national and international, with artists from all over the country and the world submitting proposals and coming to Nashville to create unique sculptures.

Centennial Park

  • Anthony Heinz May
  • Axes of the Meliad
  • 2022
  • Centennial Park
  • Located by the Parthenon

Greek mythology of Ash trees originate with the Meliae. Nymphs associated with Ash (and perhaps even all trees) the Meliae were formed by droplets of blood that spattered Gaia/Earth upon Cronos’ Castration of his father Uranus. This rather morbid and perverse story is surpassed by human perversion and exhaustion of Earth for its resources, leaving destruction and fragmentation of nature in its wake. Wordplay in this title refers to axes as a plural form of axis opposed to axes otherwise read as tools used to chop trees/wood. Axes are those invisible lines that produce grids to overlap the real, physical world in the sieving of nature.

Integrating Greek myths of the Meliae in parallel to the reconstructed Parthenon illustrates and exemplifies complexity of simulacra. The Parthenon of the Acropolis in Greece represents the golden ratio found in nature, replicating the highest order and pattern of Earth through architecture. A reconstructed Parthenon furthers a form of artifice twice removed from nature, compounding a continuum of simulacra over time, across history. As humans further sever their ties and connections with nature they get closer to the artificial and further away from nature and reality.

European Ash is known scientifically as Fraxinus Ornus or the Flowering (Manna) Ash which differs from American Ash species. Nonetheless Greek mythology provides the birth of collective Ash historically as through the Meliae. Existence and demise of Ash trees by the Emerald Ash Borer creates parallelism between past/present, myth/reality and death/existence. The present dilemma where digital facsimiles of the real have become more important than the physical world, the dying Ash tree appears as if a technological glitch dissolves nature from reality.

Downtown Riverfront

  • Ben Allanoff
  • Nashville Birds
  • 2022
  • Downtown Nashville
  • Located at Riverfront Park

Using a combination of figuration, abstraction, and calligraphic influences, I aim to express something elemental about my subjects. I am inspired by the miraculous persistence, diversity, and beauty of living things. Much of my work grows out of a desire to catalyze connections – among people, between humans and the rest of the natural world, and between our rational minds and less frequently accessed aspects of our consciousness.

My site-specific sculptures are my response to the question,  What, if anything, can I create that might add value to the experience of being in this particular place?  The local environment, light and weather conditions, and the people who will be interacting with the artwork, are all factors that come into play as I conceive and design the work.  

For “Nashville Birds”,  goals include aesthetic interest and enjoyment;  drawing attention to local birds and trees and their symbiotic relationships; and the creation of a bit of surprise and mystery regarding the role that shapes and lines play in perception and cognition.

Cedar Hill Park

  • Lindsy Davis
  • Squiggle
  • 2023
  • Madison
  • Located in Park

Potential inherently exists within all of us. Experience and perception shape that potential to something sustainable or unsustainable. This giant gestural “Squiggle” line is just that- on the brink of its potential, where all ideas start.

This infected Ash tree, being over 40 feet high and with a diameter of 13’ at its widest diameter, posed quite a threat- as it being so large and at such a potential to fall due to the nature of the infesting insect (emerald ash borer). However, it also posed a huge potential to help spread awareness of the insect through the Nashville Tree Project.

This concept is double layered. Not only is it giving new potential for this infested tree (as it was destined to be cut down), but the metaphor itself of renewal and potential is being displayed in hopes of inspiring such ideas of renewal and potential in all who experience this public sculpture. Sometimes one can find potential of positivity and sustainable action in situations where it seems hopeless or too big to handle.

What you see is through weeks of labor using only hand tools. This tree has been cut and shaped selectively to veer off into its own gesture and movement. Using my grandfather’s pull knife I carved to the cadmium layer and charred it. This method of burning is Japanese, traditionally called “Shosugiban.” There has been no pigment or paint added to the wood, only burning (lightly sealed in the first 9’ to withstand curious touching).

The idea of using fire as a controlled sustainable act of preserving instead of uncontrolled chaos and destruction yields to another metaphor. Potential exists within the most dire of circumstances, this tree, infested with an insect with a 100% death rate spreading in an almost uncontrollable manner gives us, the stewards of this land the chance to come together as a community to educate and eradicate together. Protecting our precious canopy for the future “us” to enjoy. A metaphor for potential, this public sculpture is a gestural black line, playful and inquisitive, where all ideas start.

Shelby Park

  • Joshua Kochis
  • Phantom Limb
  • 2024
  • East Nashville
  • Located in Shelby Park

Josha Kochis, an artist from Detroit, MI, was selected to transform the selected ash tree in Shelby Park.

Ever heard of epicormic shoots? Like many woody plants, Ash trees produce them as a stress response. This is not always obvious. They end up looking like unruly masses of leaves around the trunk or a big elbow. Lots of people think these “suckers” are ugly, and will remove the shoots as they grow. This is sometimes called “lion-tailing”. The attempt at increasing photosynthesis capacity is often seen as another example of nature’s stubborn insistence on chaos, in contrast to humanity’s need for order – especially when it comes to common landscaping practice. But what if we recognized this activity as the call for help that it really is?

Signs of Emerald Ash Borer infestation include canopy thinning, woodpecker activity, D-shaped holes in the bark (which may also crack and split), and the infamous wandering lines like some kind of cryptic map in the vascular layer beneath the bark of the tree – all in addition to the production of suckers. Caught early enough and treated regularly, there are a handful of insecticide applications that can save an infected Ash before it reaches the tipping point. Conventional wisdom states that once a tree’s canopy is depleted past 30%, it’s very unlikely the tree will survive. At that point, there are only two options: girdling or complete removal. Girdling is a technique used to cut off the connection between a tree’s roots and canopy, essentially killing it in place. Advantages to this approach include preserving the root system to keep the area’s soil structure intact, as well as prolonging the quality of the wood itself before the entire tree rots from the inside out. Often the trees are completely removed, and if the community is fortunate enough to have an organization like the Nashville Tree Foundation around, they are sometimes replaced with other species to try and recover the loss.

Why make a sculpture out of a dying Ash tree? I’m still not sure I know the answer. I do know that this particular tree was condemned by the city to be completely removed within a year, and that a lot of people were upset about it. I know we develop personal relationships with these gentle giants, whether it’s because we pass them on our morning jog in the park or we have a particular memory associated with their presence. Maybe you’ve spent time sitting on a quilt underneath this tree’s huge footprint of shade or, like me, stood in the center of its three primary trunks and felt like you’d stepped inside some kind of secret room. Maybe you felt safe, or quiet, or old somehow.

Ash trees have long represented wisdom and longevity. In Norse mythology and some religions, they are seen as a connection between heaven and earth. Their strong but flexible wood has been used for everything from tool handles to floorboards to car parts, ladders, posts, baseball bats and boat paddles. It is both sad and unsurprising that the downfall of this ancient species has been caused by our own carelessness. It seems we’ve let the Ash trees down after all they’ve done for us. There’s plenty of research happening to try and save what’s left of remaining populations. Sometimes a symbolic gesture in addition to the work of professionals doesn’t hurt.

Phantom Limb is my attempt at that gesture. I certainly didn’t know how to save one special Ash who lived in Shelby Park on Nashville’s east side, let alone how to stop the infestations sweeping this vast country of ours. But given the choice between knowing a really good tree for a little while longer, or watching it reduced to a stump in one day, I think I choose to spend a few more years with it. I tried to put a tree back together – more for our sake than for its own benefit. I thought that using some of its lost wood to connect the broken branches might help it stay standing that much longer. I thought maybe making the effort to spend some time getting to know its twists and angles would make it feel better. Or maybe it would just make me feel better. I hope it helps.