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The Arboria Series
The Arboria series -- a suite of immaculately crafted and evocative glass trees -- is Moore's most recent tour de force. The project began nearly a decade ago, as images of delicate, gravity-defying trees envisioned in the artist's sketchbooks. Moore was able to bring these drawings into reality at the invitation of the Tacoma Art Museum, which commissioned her to produce work to mark the opening of its Benaroya wing in 2018. Arboria blends observations of nature from across Moore's lifetime into four humanscaled trees loosely corresponding to the cycle of the seasons, titled Wisteria, Magnolia, Cherry, and Winter Plum.
The two-year process of creating these works began at a quarry, where Moore selected natural stones as bases. She then blew glass directly over the rock's surface, using nature as her mold. Moore's ingenious method for hiding her joins adds to the illusionary magic in her works: a "liquid skin" composed of silicone, crushed glass, and pigment is applied in irregular patches for a seamless finish. The finished trees are full of beauty in contradiction, composed of glass manipulated in ways that seem to defy the possibilities of the medium. They are strong and fragile, natural and fabricated, technically astonishing and seemingly effortless. Just like nature, their beauty derives in no small part from their persistence. |