phoenix tree
Background
Completed Work
Background
Part of the City of Phoenix Tree Map Project, sharing the stores and art inspired by local trees.
Phoenix Tree emerges from the life and loss of a 65‑year‑old pine that once stood behind Amy's South Phoenix home. When she moved to the property in 2019, the tree was already in decline; its trunk marked by borer holes that foretold its f
Part of the City of Phoenix Tree Map Project, sharing the stores and art inspired by local trees.
Phoenix Tree emerges from the life and loss of a 65‑year‑old pine that once stood behind Amy's South Phoenix home. When she moved to the property in 2019, the tree was already in decline; its trunk marked by borer holes that foretold its fate. Even as Amy irrigated, gardened beneath it, and lived in its shade through the early pandemic, she understood that its life in the desert—like her own—was an act of persistence in a place that demanded adaptation. Over the next four years, Amy watched it decline, mirroring the changes, challenges, and small triumphs unfolding in her own life and in the wider world as climate pressures reshaped our region and our little farm.
When the tree finally died in 2024, a friend helped Amy take it down. She saved many pieces without yet knowing their purpose. As Amy's landscape architecture practice and art studio grew, the wood revealed itself as a material carrying memory, meaning, and a call to transformation.
Concept
Completed Work
Background
Phoenix Tree is a multimedia sculpture built around a carved wooden core shaped like a truncated torso—an aging woman continually remaking her life. The exposed borer patterns are preserved and highlighted, transforming scars into abstract beauty. A mosaic front evokes renewal, growth, and the tension between chosen and imposed change
Phoenix Tree is a multimedia sculpture built around a carved wooden core shaped like a truncated torso—an aging woman continually remaking her life. The exposed borer patterns are preserved and highlighted, transforming scars into abstract beauty. A mosaic front evokes renewal, growth, and the tension between chosen and imposed change.
Our process honors the tree’s history while reshaping it into a universal message: that loss can become renewal; that adaptation is a form of resilience, and that what falls can rise again in a new form.
Completed Work
Completed Work
Completed Work
The finished work is currently located at our art studio. It will be featured in the Phoenix Tree Map when it is completed published this year. The map will include an augmented reality section with a 3d view of the sculpture and a short video of the sculpture background and process.