August 31, 2003

• Out and about today, I ended up in a parking lot.
  
  Most people don’t think of themselves as ending up in a parking lot, because usually they are moving through the parking lot on their way to some other place. But I was in a parking lot, on my way to some other place.
  
  It was then that I realized that the landscape artist in charge of this lot was a genius of the parking bonsai form.
  
  Many are not familiar with this form, even though they see it all the time. It is incredibly subtle and easily mistaken for a lack of care. But ultimately, he who can create art with the fewest materials and the least effort surely is the most skilled of all artists.
  
  I first noticed the work of this anonymous artist in this specimen:
  
  
  
  Truly, not the greatest work, but note the details of the exposed root system:
  
  
  
  The seemingly starved and desperate way these roots emerge from the soil, the abused bark, the spotty grass plugs... If the skill with which these elements are used to convey the human condition were applied to the rest of the tree, this would be a powerful, powerful work.
  
  Which brings me to another work present there in the parking lot:
  
  
  
  This astonishing piece conveys so much with so little, it takes my breath away.
  
  
  
  The puckered, scarred bark, as if having been hit by a car, and the rakish shakan angle illustrate a world gone awry. The exposed, weathered root system juxtaposed with the newly sprouting trunk creates a dynamic tension between decay and new life. In total: A potent symbol of contempt toward nature in a post-human time.
  
  My congratulations to the anonymous artist brave enough to make such a statement in the parking lot of a Taco Time.
  
  

  • 8:35 pm
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