Author: Todd Smith

Hi! I am an interdisciplinary artist and committed educator. From 2007-2010 I climbed a tree everyday and documented the project with photography, video and writing on this blog. I am revisiting the trees and writing again starting March 2018. Stay tuned. My work considers our collective impact on the urban environment. Projects range from community-based, data-driven projects interpreting bike usage into sound, photography and video series exploring human movement through urban structures and green spaces, and interactive sculptures that vary in their use of found materials, analog technologies, and emerging digital media. I currently teach a variety of 2D, 3D and digital subjects at universities in the Louisville, Kentucky area.
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DAY 24


DAY 24
04.28.07
TREE 27 & 28

Lately I’ve been wandering to areas of the Sanctuary I haven’t visited yet to find trees to climb. Over beyond the white water tower in the field I found 3 more trail heads I can’t wait to explore. From across the field I saw large trees on the edge of a wood. The closer I got to them the more I realized they were too big and the branches too high. Except one where the trunk split about 9 or 10 feet up. I grabbed a fallen tree and leaned it in the split. But it was too dead to trust. I looked around for another way and saw a young tree growing next to the large trunk that came close to the first branch 12-14 feet up (I guess). It felt very high. I didn’t get any higher, though I could touch the next highest branch. Again my fear judged my position high enough. Yet with the tree transfer and the height, I am not disappointed like yesterday.

 

4-28-08:  In the picture above you can see both the small trunk I leaned up against the large tree and the small tree that I used to get to that first large branch.  Also, I wrote “(I guess)” because my judgment of distance was not great but has improved over the project.  Well… sometimes.  Like yesterday I climbed this huge maple tree at Cox’s Park.  To get down I went way out on a low limb then hung down from my hands.  I walked out further to bend the branch down and get closer to the ground to drop.  I thought I was pretty close to the ground, let go and fell a lot farther than I thought.  My ankles had that sudden pinching pain from landing flat footed.  But the tree with all it’s new green leaves was beautiful.  I took two videos but I don’t like either so will not be sharing them.  One had potential.  I sat in the top and picked the young green whirligigs, then dropped them in the camera’s view so I could record them twisting down.  It went for over 2 minutes and none of the ones that actually spun like a helicopter got camptured by the camera.  The other one was me talking about the climb while I look around from the top.  I posted a similar one yesterday, and as is normal, I didn’t like what I said nor the sound of my voice.  But I took some pictures.  Here is my favorite: