Sacred Footprint

2022

Stainless steel, aluminum and acrylic paint

Commissioned by Meta

Image courtesy of the artist

 

“I’m deeply grateful to share the completion of “Sacred Footprint”, a 16-meter tall, 3d printed, cast, and painted, steel and aluminum sculpture for Meta’s new New York headquarters in the renovated historic James A. Farley Postal Service building in midtown Manhattan.

 

Sacred Footprint primarily takes form from, and is rooted in, the Temperate Deciduous Forest eco-region of New York state and the greater northeast. While having supported our species for over 50 thousand years, Temperate Deciduous Forests evolved over the past 30 million years and are some of the oldest bio-communities living in the world. Their increasing vulnerability to the climate crisis makes temperate forests symbolic of the danger the living world is in.

 

The tree is composed of many different species of trees that I encountered and 3d scanned. The different types of trees, branches and leaves that make up the sculpture represent a variety of different New York eco-regions like the stunted-conifer boreal islands, vestiges of the last ice-age that are found in New York’s highest elevations and make up the crown of the sculpture; down through high altitude yellow and paper birch hardwood; down further through lower elevation species like Red Oak and White Ash.

 

Sacred Footprint references the mythical Tree of Life, an ancient concept that appears in many cultures, traditions, and religions worldwide. The Tree of Life traverses the heavens, the earth, and the underworld and represents the interconnectedness of all things. The different tree species link together into a chain, or necklace, suspended from wires above the 4-floor central atrium of Meta’s office. The interlinked trees represent the web of ecosystems and the inherent resilience of diversity as well as the literal genetic family tree of all life on earth. The helix links reference the woven and braided nature of the world, the braid of life, as found in the cosmologies of many First Nations cultures, as well as alluding to the double helix structure of DNA and the code of life.”