Fallen

Caz Azevedo
Fallen, 2017
​Ceramics, Intaglio prints, wood, wire, denim, cotton t-shirts, wheat paste, natural pigments, oil, acrylic, 108" x 47" x 32"

Fallen begins with research through a visual dissection of a personal observation, and exploration of intimate details of the object of my study:  the fallen tree.  What about this that draws my interests?  There is a majestic history that narrates a past told by my vivid imagination while reading the remains of redwood trunks along a random path one day. Perhaps it is the imprint of organic textures left by the once living cells that created this structure.  How does it compare to other existing forms that age with cracks, breaks, and rotting hollow holes as it lies in its own debris of dislodged particles.  How am I this tree?  I collect material and make pigments from the tree, dirt and surroundings from the site to be used within my work, and revisit the site often, establishing a relationship with the fallen trees and the space which for me now becomes a nostalgic setting.  I become obsessed with fallen objects that I come across and ponder the liminal act of falling.  By inducing a sense of falling through meditation, I replay a feeling of vertigo until my body tingles with a sensation of falling but by instinct I catch myself, grabbing a grounded object for balance.  To better understand what it is like to be the fallen, I lie on the ground as still and stiff as the lifeless tree without movement.  Later I appreciate the right to move free and not to be contained by motionless.
                In the end, this project is more than just about the fallen tree.  It perhaps speaks in relation of what it means to fall, much of the time by the hand of another, and left to be abandoned, or parted for some other type of distribution.  A tree that once stood tall in the forest falls, and the people wander if it made a sound.  I ask the people, if you fell, what sound would you make?  There are many who have fallen no different than this tree, yet many have been disregarded as this one has been.