Cabinet Oak
Lyndon Baines Johnson owned a ranch in Stonewall, Texas. It was called the “Texas White House” while he was president. Adjacent to the ranch house is a sprawling live oak tree where, sometimes, cabinet meetings would be held. It was named The Cabinet Oak. In 2019, lightning struck the tree causing a large branch to fall and a new idea about how to support the arts took seed.
I, along with other artists, have been invited to select sections of this historic oak and create a work of art in our “own artistic vision.” These creations will be sold at an auction May 6, 2023. The money raised will go to the creation of an Artist Residency Program and other renovation projects at the Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park.
After making selections from the Cabinet Oak Project warehouse, I took various limbs and trunks to a local mill and had them sawn into different thicknesses. They ranged from 1/8 to 3/4 of an inch. For this image, I selected a 3-inch diameter piece cut from a small limb and placed it in a cone created from parchment paper. What appeared was a kind of magical, other worldly cosmos. It's a place I've visited in dreams that only be described as Falling Up. It exemplifies my belief that Everything is Also Something Else. That there are multiple ways of looking at everything.
Falling Up, is the image I've selected to be in the Cabinet Oak Auction. It is a Carbon Pigment, Single Original Print on Hahnemuhle Photorag Bright White Watercolor Paper. The Image size is 14x17.5 inches on 16x20 inch paper, signed and titled on the front. The framed size is 24x31 inches. The price is $3,600 and the minimum bid is $2,000
click on image to enlarge
Falling Up
