Highland Park
public art
Stone Tree Inverted Post
(Bound Water Light), 2003
Jud Fine, artist
In an efford to focus on a celebration of the existing unique character of the Highland Park community, Artist Jud Fine redesigned his concept for the Highland Park Station. The structural organization of the elongated plaza with its colonnade of trees highlights the Craftman style of architecture of the area with its use of large wood beams, extended eaves and local arroyo stones. The Craftman era suggests the purist motive of simple and artful living. Fine's installation of two art elements at the site provides a connection between the plaza as neighborhood/home, and the station as an embarkation point of the world beyond. Citing the Craftman style use of wood and stone as structure merging with foundation, Fine has created and expansive "Stone Tree." Rising significantly to 18 feet high and spanning 16 feet, the faux stone tree is a strong vertical element and the focal point of the plaza. It references the mythical tree of life and is an edealized icon of the essence of the Craftman style, a conjunction of the man-made and the natural. Fine has inverted the design element of the canopy supports for the two platform lighting elements, or "Inverted Posts," which flank the platform.
As a counterpoint, it is the reverse of "Stone Tree," an "inverted" mythological tree of life with its roots in the heavens and its branches in the earth. These vertical structures, practically providing seating elements, are topped by large blue fiberglass illuminated globes. Unifying and connecting the entire space is "Copper Bound," 2 in. cooper wire bands that literally bind the various artistic and architectural elements. The strapping is wrapped tightly around the stone tree and inverted posts holding th elight elements.
Jud Fine has taken his cue most notably from the South Pasadena Oaklawn Waiting Station on Fair Oaks Avenue, desingned and build in 1906 by the renowned Craftsman era architects, Greene&Greene. One hundred years later, the Highland Park Station is incorporating the environmentally appropriate merger of good design withing a natural setting. The Plaza is grounded as a neighborhood "home" before the journey takes one beyong the station.
