Fall's Colors
Fall's Colors, 2008. Painted fiberglass branch, plastic leaves, stainless steel cuff, dimensions variable.
I made Fall’s Colors for an exhibition at MASS MoCA called Badlands: New Horizons in Landscape, curated by Denise Markonish. A small red maple tree, visible from within one of the galleries in Mass MoCA, was fitted with an artificial branch attached to the trunk by a metal cuff, like a kind of prosthetic. The plastic leaves on this branch were in a permanent state of peak fall color. The piece was up for an entire year, and during most of this time, the branch stood out awkwardly, like an overdressed guest at a party. But for the brief and famously colorful fall season in this part of Massachusetts, the branch disappeared entirely. During the most spectacular phase of fall, Fall's Colors (“false colors”) was at its most unspectacular.
