Too Ugly to Live
Mixed media sculpture
72" x 34" x 10"
2023

This piece is one of a series of works I have created in the past five years that address the decimation of our forests due to climate change and human activity. “Too Ugly to Live” pays tribute to the 6,000 native limber pines in Craters of the Moon National Monument, Idaho that park managers poisoned and chopped off at the roots in the 1960’s. Their decision was based on their own notions of “aesthetic trees”, not on any sound science. In fact, limber pines are one of the few trees able to establish root systems and grow in the small areas of soil in the harsh volcanic rock, and they have flourished there for millennia. They were killed simply because they were colonized by native mistletoe, which has co-evolved with the trees. The mistletoe trees grow dense gnarled branches people call “witches’ brooms”, and park managers considered these trees “ugly”. “Too Ugly to Live” depicts a ghostly white limber pine chopped off at the roots and bleeding profusely like a decapitated person. I want to convey the senseless tragedy of this act, contrasted with the beauty of a limber pine’s gnarled branches.