Collapsing notions of time in fragments through Tree stump drawing

Last summer I noticed many tree stumps litter Baltimore.  I decided to make drawings from rubbing opposing halves of two tree stumps to give the affect of a collapsing of distance between the time of the rubbings.  I found notions of distance between the two rubbings collapsed in two ways: (1) on the folds where each of the tree stumps meet at a disjuncture; (2) the space outside of the tree rings.

The posing of fragments of two tree stumps in what mimics the continuity of a tree stump in its entirety shows notions of time as fragmented and discontinuous. 

Tree stump drawing attempts to disrupt any myth of teleology of time.  Carol Mavor writes of the filmmaker Chris Marker’s filming of a big sequoia in Sans Soleil, 1983, to refer to the collapsing of notions of time outside of the tree’s rings in her article, "HAPPINESS WITH A LONG PIECE OF BLACK LEADER: CHRIS MARKER'S SANS SOLEIL", when she writes:

"In Sans soleil, Marker refers to La Jetee, where the protagonist back in time goes with the beautiful woman he loves to the Jardin des Plantes and stands before the cut-away of the big ringed sequoia: 'the hand pointed to a place outside the tree, outside of time'. The tree in the Jardin des Plantes in La Jetee is, of course, hailing Hitchcock's Vertigo when Madeleine and Scotty are in California's Muir Woods in front of a cross-sectioned giant sequoia, and... 'On it Madeleine traced the short distance between two of those concentric lines that measured the age of the tree and said, "Here I was born... and here I died"”" (Mavor, Carol, Art History, vol. 3, no. 5, november 2007, pp. 736-738).

instead of viewing the folds and space outside of the tree stump drawings as a space outside of time, it seems more likely that such a space collapses notions of time, and thus, locates oneself in the present.

7:06 Charles Street and Mount Royal Avenue

7:15 pm Charles Street between Penn Station and Mount Royal Avenue

8:12 am and 8:17 am between Eager and Read Streets on Saint Paul Street

7:55 am and 7:59 am between Eager and Read Streets on Saint Paul Street