Moving a Tree

[Moving a Tree is a seven-minute video that starts with a black screen that crossfades into a late-summer view into a little valley between rolling hills. The grasses are tall and green and brown and orange. Two scraggy trees occupy the valley. “Moving a Tree'' appears in a large, white sans serif typeface. From the left, a character wearing a black suit walks into the scene and toward the tree on the right. The character is played by Avery Lawrence. He stops near the base of the tree. A medium close-up shot tilts from his twiddling thumbs, past his red necktie and pocket kerchief, to his face, which inspects the tree. Another tilt shot shows the trunk and branches of the tree. The tree seems half dead, half alive. The besuited character picks up the climbing harness and red rope at his feet. A montage of close-up shots shows him donning the harness. He throws the red rope over a branch. Using the harness and rope, he climbs the tree, pulling a handsaw behind him. Over the next dozen shots, he cuts down the branches with the handsaw. He uses the rope to descend the branchless trunk and changes gear. With climbing spikes, he ascends the trunk. Using the handsaw, he reduces the trunk to a pile of logs. He starts to undress. Under his black suit is another outfit: red Converse high-tops, white socks with red stripes, white tennis shorts, white leather gloves, white polo shirt, safety goggles, a white climbing helmet. He looks at the camera then to his left. He picks up a log. In the next shot, he walks from the left to the right, carrying the log like a backpack. He walks up a small hill toward a thirty-foot-tall scaffolding made of two-by-fours. It looks like the skeleton of a rocketship. He lifts the log into place in the scaffolding using a rope and pulley. In the following scenes, he collects the remaining logs and branches, carries them up the hill, and uses two-by-fours to rebuild the tree inside the scaffolding. Finalizing this new tree-like assemblage, he descends the scaffolding and walks away. The scaffolding lifts into the air and disappears off-camera. The man is gone. The assemblage stands alone at the top of the hill.]

[Six stills from Moving a Tree that mark the major beats of the short video. Starting at top left, a person wearing a black business suit stands in a field of high grass and looks at a 40-foot-tall walnut tree. It’s summer. The morning shadows are long. In the next image, the person, wearing a climbing harness and spikes, ascends the tree’s trunk. Next, in a medium shot, the person, still wearing the harness, positions a 3-foot hand saw at the top of the trunk. In the following image, the person now wears a white helmet and white polo. He carries a large log on his back as if it were a backpack. In the second-to-last image, the sunset casts an orange glow on a 30-foot-tall scaffolding. 15 feet up in the scaffolding, the person secures a stack of logs with 2x4s. In the final image, the scaffolding is gone. A tree-like object composed of logs and branches secured with construction lumber stands alone on top of a grassy hill.]

[The hero image for Moving a Tree that features Avery Lawrence on a treadmill in a field with a 4-by-8-foot wallpapered backdrop behind him. Avery wears the “tennis whites” outfit from Moving a Tree. It consists of a white helmet, white polo shirt, white shorts, white gloves, white socks with red stripes, and red high-top Converse All-Stars. A section of a tree’s trunk is secured to his back with red straps. He faces the right. The pink and cream wallpaper features drawings of Avery’s maternal grandparents and a segmented tree. In the field, the grasses are high. Blue and gray clouds fill the sky in the background, yet the sun, located behind the camera, fully illuminates Avery and casts a sharp shadow on the wallpapered backdrop.]

[An exhibition view of Avery Lawrence is Moving a Tree and Arranging Suitcases at 1708 Gallery in Richmond, VA in 2012. Three figure drawings on beige paper, one tree drawing on white paper, and a mounted hand saw hang on a gallery wall. The drawings and the saw are framed in yellow wood. The wall is covered in pink and cream wallpaper. From left to right, the first drawing features a person in a black business suit looking down. He holds a hand saw. In the next drawing, a person wears a white helmet, shirt, shorts, and gloves. He leans slightly forward and looks down. He has a dark shape on his back, a tree trunk. The mounted hand saw hangs directly above this drawing. The final figure drawing also features the person in the black suit. In this image, he looks up with arms spread and handsaw hanging from his right hand. The final drawing, difficult to see in the background, is of the tree-like assemblage from the Moving a Tree video. The final drawing is skinnier and taller than the others. It is about 2 feet wide and 7 feet tall. The figure drawings measure about 2.5 feet wide and 3 feet tall in their frames.]

[This watercolor and ink drawing on paper is called Tree (2012). With its frame, the drawing measures about 2 feet wide by 7 feet tall. It hangs on a wall covered with a pink and cream wallpaper in an exhibition at 1708 Gallery in Richmond, VA called Avery Lawrence is Moving a Tree and Arranging Suitcases. The drawing is of the tree-like object from the end of the Moving a Tree video. It is a fairly realistic representation of the tree-like object. You can see that the dark-brown pieces of the felled tree are held together with light-yellow construction lumber. Black ink articulates the bark pattern on the tree pieces. The consistency of the marks and their opacity adds a slight comic-book quality to the drawing. The size, shape, and texture of the lumber pieces, however, are rendered only with watercolor. This establishes an ethereality in those areas and clear contrast with the black lines of the bark.]

[This exhibition photograph from In My Room: Artists Paint the Interior 1950-Now at the Fralin Museum of Art in 2018 features Avery’s Moving a Tree (2011) wallpaper. The show, curated by Rebecca Schoenthal and Ryan Steadman, groups together various images of interior spaces and considers the effect of cultural, technological, and psychological shifts on why and how artists render those spaces. In this photograph, Avery’s pink and cream wallpaper covers two walls that create an entrance vestibule on the left. Two paintings–one by Roy Lichtenstein of a folding chair behind a table with folded sheets on it and one by Rachel Rossin of what appears to be sunlight casting a window shape on water–are installed over the wallpaper. Five more paintings are visible in the room, hanging on salmon-colored walls. Hexagonal, terracotta tiles tessellate the floor. ]

[Avery Lawrence and Nemanja Cetic pose inside of a 30-foot tall wooden scaffolding. Ross McDermott took this production photograph in August of 2011 at the end of a day of filming. The sun sets, casting an orange glow over Avery, Nemanja, and the scaffolding. Standing at the top, Avery wears the "Tennis Whites" outfit from Moving a Tree (white helmet, white polo shirt, white shorts, white gloves, white socks, and red Converse high tops). Nemanja, towards the bottom, wears a blue tank top and rolled-up jean pants. A log from the tree felled in the Moving a Tree video rests next to Nemanja on his level of the scaffolding. A white rope attached to the log extends up through the scaffolding to the level where Avery stands, through a pulley, and back down to the ground. It disappears into the high grass.]