First glimpse of the tree. It’s the stainless steel one.

There it is.

It’s hard to get an idea of the scale of it from pictures. Here’s the base of it. It’s about three feet across.

Look up. Look way up.

It’s called One Hundred Foot Line, and it’s by US sculptor Roxy Paine. Here’s Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roxy_Paine

This is the National Gallery’s website:
http://www.gallery.ca/roxypaine/en/index.htm

One Hundred Foot Line is part of a series of sculptures called Dendroids. Most of them look like trees. Ours looks like a dead tree without any branches.

Do I like it? I don’t know. Not specially. It’s impressive for its sheer size, but I can’t help thinking we got the one Dendroid that no other city liked enough to buy.

Maybe it will grow on me. You should go see it and decide for yourself.

I stopped to get a couple of shots of Maman, the other massive outdoor sculpture at the National Gallery.

This one I definitely like. Who wouldn’t like a statue of a giant spider?

Pic 611
Sifton

October 23, 2009