Artwork > Quercus: The Constant Oak / Northern Spark 2017

Quercus: The Constant Oak
Photographs and painted mylar with twenty oaks from the collection of the College of Biological Sciences Conservatory
2017
The Constant Oak, no. 11
Archival Inkjet Print
30 x 20 inches
2017
Quercus: The Constant Oak
Installation View.
2017
The Constant Oak, no. 9
Archival Inkjet Print
30 x 20 inches
2017
Northern Spark 2017, Regan Golden, Oaks Collection,
Installation (Acrylic on Plastic, wood stands, twelve Oak trees, three Archival Inkjet Prints, plastic sheeting)
2017
Quercus Collection
Archival Inkjet Print on Hahnmuhle
40 x 30 inches
2022

This temporary installation at Twin Cities Public Television for Northern Spark 2017 is a tribute to the integral role that Oaks play in the Midwestern landscape as a keystone species that stores carbon and filters pollutants out of the air. It is also a tribute to the American landscape painter Charles Burchfield who, as his life slipped away, watched a single oak leaf twirl in the winter wind. The leaf inspired one of his last paintings, The Constant Leaf (1960) and his wife Bertha eventually framed the leaf as a tribute to his tenacity. I started this project by scanning one leaf from all 52 species of Oaks housed in the College of Biological Sciences Conservatory.