Crawling into the woodwork

Artist Joel Tauber was captivated the first time he laid eyes on the little sycamore in the middle of the Rose Bowl parking lot. "It struck me on a metaphorical level," he says. "It just seemed like this forgotten figure in this sea of asphalt, and that seemed indicative of where we are environmentally."

Since that day two years ago, Tauber has devoted his life and art to the tree. He began watering it and installed metal railings to protect it from cars. Now he is helping it reproduce. With the assistance of the Theodore Payne Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to the preservation of native California plants, he has collected its seeds and grown "tree babies."

Tauber has documented his efforts with similar dedication. Titled "Sick-Amour," the project includes a documentary film, a video installation and, most ambitiously, a permanent "tree museum." The plan for the latter calls for replacing the asphalt in a roughly 1,900-square-foot rectangle around the tree with mulch and river stones, to increase oxygen and water flow. A "necklace" of boulders will protect the tree and display educational plaques. To top it off, Tauber has sculpted a whimsical pair of "earrings" to hang from the branches.

"When he told me that he had fallen in love with a tree, I wasn't surprised," says Susanne Vielmetter, whose Culver City gallery represents Tauber. In previous projects the L.A.-based artist has transposed underwater diving into music and flown over the desert suspended from helium balloons while playing a bagpipe. "You think it's funny and a little nutty, and sweet," Vielmetter continued, but "Sick-Amour" really addresses a much larger issue, "in this case, fundamentally, what our relationship to nature is."

The video installation, which will have its debut at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects on March 17, consists of 12 segments. Arranged in the shape of a tree, each is a personal meditation on some aspect of the sycamore. In one, Tauber lauds the tree as an "invisible worker" thanklessly cleaning the air and Earth; in another he laments the pests that attack it, comparing their exploits to the abuses of capitalism. Backed by scientific research and narrated in a passionate, though often humorous, voice, Tauber's videos urge viewers to consider the environmental toll of urban development and to better care for the natural features that survive within it.