Homage to trees

At Morton Arboretum in Chicago is a fascinating set of 5 installations - “Human+Nature” by South African artist Daniel Popper and consists of five sculptures to be found around the grounds. Constructed of wood, glass-reinforced concrete, fiberglass, and steel, the looming sculptures stand out against the verdant landscape and pay homage to nature’s endurance and diversity, particularly the 220,000 individual specimens growing on the grounds.?Human + Nature , is Popper’s largest exhibition to date.

Poised in pose, material, and overall aesthetic, “Hallow,” which stands at the Arboretum’s entrance, is a poetic sculpture evocative of? the fern canopied installation ?the artist unveiled late last year in Fort Lauderdale. Each is constructed at a monumental scale, standing up to 26 feet tall and weighing multiple metric tons.

This Human + Nature exercise brings to mind the words of Rabindranath Tagore.

" The time that my journey takes is long and the way of it long.

I came out on the chariot of the first gleam of light, and pursued my voyage through the wilderness of worlds leaving my track on many a star and planet.

It is the most distant course that comes nearest to thyself, and that training is the most intricate which leads to the utter simplicity of a tune.

The traveller has to knock at every alien door to come to his own, and one has to wander through all the outer worlds to reach the innermost shrine at the end.

My eyes strayed far and wide before I shut them and said ‘Here art thou!’

The question and the cry ‘Oh, where?’ melt into tears of a thousand streams and deluge the world with the flood of the assurance ‘I am!’

Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali, 12