How to Move a Tree
Sarah Martin reflects on a multi-day installation shaped by precision, patience, and a team that keeps finding its way back to the same branches.
Last year at the Akron Art Museum, Partner Loan Network Manager Sarah Martin helped install Untitled #1383 (Sisters – Two Trees) by Petah Coyne—a work that arrives in the gallery like, “hi, I brought my entire ecosystem.”
At its center is an apple tree transformed into an immersive composition: its branches covered in thousands of red silk flowers whose waxed petals catch the light like a shifting tide. The roots are wrapped in deep blue and black velvet that ripples like water, while white and silver-pied peacocks rest among the blooms, calm and glowing within the scene. The result is part spectacle, part environment, part “how is this even traveling?”
The first installation took nearly two weeks. Now, the team has brought the process down to about two days—still intense, but guided by the kind of rhythm that comes from assembling the same artwork together more than four times.
“It’s always exciting,” Martin says. “There’s a lot of problem-solving, but that’s the fun part. The materials are really delicate, and the tree is very old, so everyone naturally slows down.”
What she enjoys most, though, is the sense of reunion the project now carries with it.
“It’s like a gathering point for all of us,” she says. “We come back together with this tree, picking up both tools and conversations right where we left off.”
To learn more about the artist and installation, explore the links below: