Ash in Flight

 

Dominating the front yard of our house on Lock Street is a majestic eighty-foot Ash tree. Like many of the trees that make Peterborough a beautiful place, it appears very healthy, to the point of making me wonder if there are little arborist elves running around town at night.

Directly underneath the Ash is a Peterborough Transit bus stop, just a few feet from our front door and half a block from the Memorial Centre. Many transit riders take refuge beneath its canopy, including plenty of Laker and Pete's fans. Our Ash tree offers a cool spot when it’s hot and a dry place when it rains for everyone.

 

Peterborough has been warned that our Ash Trees may be in danger. The Emerald Ash Borer is on its way and may spread here. This is bad news for the trees. The beetle bores into the Ash’s bark and lays its larva, which bore in deeper cutting off the flow of water and nutrients to the leaves, eventually killing the trees.  Fortunately the plight of the Ash tree is being actively addressed by: the City of Peterborough, the Ontario Commercial Arborist Association and the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources.

 

I propose to take this image of our Ash tree and re-position so that it appears as if it is flying horizontally across the buses two long side panels taking full advantage of the vehicle’s available surface dimensions while using the physical size of the tree to its it’s greatest potential against the scale of the bus.

 

Positioning the image of the Ash horizontally across the breath of the bus changes the way we may normally view a tree, potentially leading to the possibility of other readings.

For instance, besides from the seriousness of the Emerald Ash Borer, interesting relationships between nature and the manufactured may be contemplated, such as: the similarities and differences between photosynthesis and combustion systems.

 

This compositional shift combined with the scale of the project, brings to my Peterborough Transit Bus Wrap Proposal something close to what the Surrealists termed the marvelous! When seen travelling our city streets the Ash in Flight will appear as if the spirit of this tree is flying down the streets of Peterborough through all kinds of weather.