restoration-effort — Jeremiah Barber

JEREMIAH BARBER

From top to bottom:
Second Growth Redwood Tree Slice
Plywood and adhesive
49”x43”x4”
2024-25

Madrone Tree Branch
Plywood and adhesive
47”x24”x17”
2024-25

Douglas Fir Tree Stump
Plywood and adhesive
24”x23”x32”
2025

Photos by Chris Grunder

This series of sculptures is fabricated from an imagined and probable future in which old growth trees are no longer an available resource, yet we humans are still haunted by the memory of their role as markers of time, decorative objects, or furniture. The works are made entirely from plywood, which has been cut into hundreds, possibly thousands, of small pieces, and reconfigured to map out the complex organic forms of tree growth rings, branches, and bark.

Plywood is an engineered lumber, made from an industrial process of shaving layers of logs that are typically grown in environmentally degraded monocultures. The shaved veneers are coated with glue and pressed in a cross-grain pattern. In this series, the cross-grain pattern mimics the alternating dark-light pattern of wood grain, which is derived from the seasonal cycle of growth, with the abundance of rain and nutrients (”early wood” or “spring wood”) resulting in the light portion of a tree ring, and the darker ring representing the slower growth that occurs as resources dry up (”late wood” or “autumn wood”).

These works are made through a meticulous, labor intensive process of reverse manufacturing. The rings of trees grow in response to sunlight, wind and other environmental factors, and to capture the unpredictable wave forms of the grain, plywood is added and then cut away through a variety of woodworking methods. Based on observed or collected samples, they mimic real tree growth but have their own markers of the industrial process, including lumber grade stamps and colorful dots of paint that are used to identify the brand and thickness.