TITLE: TBD, holding title Lakebones Archway

COMMISSIONED BY: City of Burlington, Burlington City Arts, Burlington, Vermont

TEAM: Nancy Winship Milliken, Eliot Lothrop, Mike and Tawnya Kiernan

ENGINEER: John Higgins, Artisan Engineering

EXPECTED INSTALL DATE: Fall 2025

PERMANENT-ENVIRONMENTAL-PUBLIC ART

The design of the Main Street sculpture offers the opportunity to tell two stories. One looks back at the history of Burlington’s waterfront and the other looks forward towards the future health of the lake through sustainable forestry and management of Lake Champlain tributary watersheds. By restoring and maintaining riparian and floodplain forests and dead wood in the rivers and lake, these conservation efforts provide habitat, increase resilience to future floods, reduce nutrient input and improve water quality. The trees of Vermont have been a big part of the development of our cities and towns. Ultimately the stories are told through the history of the tree and the field plants in the installation.

In 1854, the railroad service reached Burlington and the lumber industry came to dominate Burlington’s waterfront, establishing the city as America’s third largest lumber port. By the end of the Civil War, Vermont was 80 percent deforested, soil erosion was contaminating waterways and reducing the populations of fish and wildlife. In response, Vermont’s Joseph Battell, Frederick Billings, William Seward Webb, and George Perkins Marsh created a conservation legacy in Vermont and beyond that has continued to the present day. The future health of our lake and by extension the Burlington community depends on learning from the past and supporting conservation, sustainable land use and stormwater mitigation efforts today.

TREE

The whitened, organic and iconic form of tree in an elevated horizontal presentation brings a variety of concepts to the city. Reverence for trees is a main theme of the installation. The forests in Vermont, from the mountain to the riparian woods are represented in this elevated tree. The search for a specimen white oak, cedar or black locust tree provides the opportunity to engage the community in this public art installation. The quest, procurement and transportation will be documented in the story of this particular tree. Where it was found, what was its fate, how old was it and what happened in the timeline of the tree. This nature centric memorial cradles, honors, and evokes stories of the trees of Vermont that we hold dear.

SITE

This unique site has a black glass building at the end of the alcove which allows, when the leaves are down, a reflection of the whitened sculpture. A floating tree, ghostlike. The alcove also has a large live vertical tree which the horizontal tree bisects. The proximity of the live maple tree is important to the concepts of the installation.

SCALE

The scale of the sculpture is to be seen from close up, far away, uphill, down hill and across the street. The height of the structure allows viewers to interact by walking through the installation and lines the tree up with the blackened glass of the building in the alcove while in relationship with the nearby live tree

COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT

The search for the specimen tree has the opportunity for community involvement and engages Vermont in the search. Public art will be accepted and cared for by the community if they are involved in the sculpture from the beginning. We can offer the same involvement and story from Bee the Change and the pollinator habitat.

STRUCTURE

The steel structure was chosen for longevity and low maintenance and relates to the city infrastructure. The raw steel is powder coated clear and has a simple architectural design used in many of our installations. It supports and cradles the tree above the viewer’s head as they walk through the installation, offering a walk through plinth or pedestal.

The found tree will ultimately drive the design above ground. How it is carried or cradled on the steel form will be determined by the shape and size of the tree.

CONSERVATION AND EDUCATION EFFORTS

There are opportunities to extend the reach of the sculpture by interpreting and educating the public about historic conservation efforts that happened in response to forest clearing and degradation (Vermont’s Joseph Battell, Frederick Billings, William Seward Webb, and George Perkins Marsh created a conservation legacy) and the legacy of current conservation in Lake Champlain, its watersheds and beyond .

LIGHTING

Both the tree and bench will be lit at night by solar lights located on the ground