Artist Statement
Meg Madison’s conceptual photo essay documents the fate of evergreen trees after the Christmas holiday. The pictures examine this annual ritual as symbolic for aspects of daily life. Madison ponders the transition of a potent sign after its usefulness has passed and it must be disposed. The pictures capture the objects with great compassions, as a symbol of perpetual faith and fertility transforms to a symbol for disposable culture and mass consumerism.
Madison takes the trees out of their usual context by photographing them in the city yards where they are brought to be recycled. In the photographs the once carefully pruned tree becomes one of the hundreds being moved about by heavy machinery and turned into mulch. The photographs are formal, graphic, and the chromomeric printing process faithfully represents the broad range of green hues characteristic of the trees. The vibrant and startling variations in the green unify the images as they are placed with the heavy machinery that will transform this “object” back to organic material.
The photographs proposed for FOTOFEST are chromogenic prints on Fuji flex paper made by Los Angeles master printer John Weldon from 2 ¼ negatives. The quality of the printing makes vibrant and startling the variation in the greens which unify the images in their differences. The 20” by 20” photographs for exhibition are archival mounted to acrylic and professionally enclosed in walnut wood frames, in an edition of ten. The 30” by 30” prints are similarly mounted and framed in an edition of three.
The 12.26 work includes a large mural size inkjet print of TREES IN RAIN to represent the parallel of the life-size trees in their majestic glory juxtaposed with the metal dumpster they reside in. The work also includes a series of small 6” x 6” prints with large white borders that draw the viewer into the process that underlies the holiday ritual.
Southern California Artscene Magazine recommended the work in February 2007:“Few art shows are simultaneously elegant and hilarious, but Ms Madison pulled off the perfect January coda to the Holiday frenzy in which we are all complicit. “
Kim Beil reviewed Meg Madison at Kristi Engle Gallery in ARTWEEK March 2007:“Madison gently directs her photographs to speak on their own and in so doing she reveals both the beauty and irony found in the multilayered discourse of signs. Taking her work a step beyond the nostalgia evoked by the sight of trees in the trash on December 26 and making her viewers really work to denaturalize the symbolism of the Christmas tree in an unfamiliar setting was a perceptive and sophisticated choice. As was first seen in her work on Surface Streets, Madison excels at these kinds of minute observations; she is a master in the philosophy of the vernacular.”
And Holly Meyers, art critic of Los Angeles Times, states in her catalog essay: “this is also a wholesome, efficient, and widely beneficial process, and Madison's photographs reflect that more auspicious dimension as well. … and there's something soothing to the abundance of muted green tones. In the labor of the city workers, sweeping and shoveling and driving these machines, one finds the comforting assurance of life moving on. The trees that produced all that oxygen on the farm, that drew the smell of nature into so many urban homes, delighting children and bringing families together—happily, one hopes—is being transformed into fertilizer to help other trees in the much-loved parks of New York and Los Angeles to produce more oxygen, delight more children, and so on….for better or worse, she follows this icon out the back door to mark the point where it sinks back into the soil of our culture.”
Photographing Christmas Trees began ten years ago as Madison was drawn by the emotional content linked to the tree’s representation from her Dad’s 16mm home movies of Christmas morning. There was always narrative with a Christmas tree, although the same image drew varied reactions from viewers. When Madison photographed abandoned trees by the side of the road she examined the transformation from treasured symbol - our Christmas ideals of hope, compassions and joy - to trash thrown in the street and passed by with downcast eyes. Examining the trees out of their normal context began an exploration into the moment that something changes: the unique living tree is butchered in the forest, converted to desired object and then, discarded to be transformed to something unwanted.
Two yeas ago Madison followed the trees to recycling centers in both New York and Los Angeles, her native and adopted homes. They are an examination of the cultural rituals we use to derive meaning in our lives, and inevitably the abandonment of things and persons that lose value. My intent is to examine, to see connections, and to look at the whole picture.
