By John Grade

Seattle artist John Grade created a 40-metre plaster cast of a living 150-year-old hemlock tree in Washington State in the United States. He then engaged more than a thousand volunteers to weave the shell of a new tree from the mold, using a half-million strips of reclaimed old growth red cedar.

The making of the sculpture Middle Fork is ongoing and Davos participants are invited to participate in building the tree. After Middle Fork completes its exhibition cycle, it will then be returned back to the base of the tree where it was cast, left to moss over and gradually disintegrate into the forest floor. The sculpture is a collective meditation on our relationship with nature and an invitation to find beauty in the every day.

Middle Fork was originally featured in “Wonder”, an exhibition of the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. “Wonder” celebrated the value art museums bring to our lives as places to encounter the unexpected, to lose oneself in awe and amazement, and to experience wonder.

The Smithsonian Institution—the world’s largest museum, education, and research complex—investigates, celebrates, and shares the wonder of our cultural and natural worlds in more than 150 countries.

Learn more at johngrade.com.