Yellow Nest

AUTUMN, FALL FOLIAGE
Vermont, USA

The name Vermont derives from the French words for green mountains, and in fall the green turns into an encompassing expanse of color that spills from hilltops to the valley floors below. Every shade, tone, and hue – from intense yellow to burgundy – can be found in the foliage. The color of the fall foliage in Vermont is magnified by the landscape: sugar maple trees, covered bridges over white water streams, mountain views, rugged ravines, and waterfalls. The forests of Vermont are extensive, covering the majority of the state. The most colorful trees are the most common and include maple, oak, birch, beech and ash.

In this context, Ivan Juarez has recently produced a series of landscape observatories, conceiving them as interactive and sensitive pieces that explore the natural environment -fall foliage-in Vermont, through personal experience. They are a series of site-specific interventions in which the relationship with the environment is the essence of the work. A dialogue with the unique symphony of colors in which each day nature brings different colors to the trees.

The site-specific intervention, Yellow nest, creates a dialogue with nature generated through the cyclical transformation of autumn trees. The piece provides a series of observatories that emerges from the landscape for the visitor to create and perceive new experiences. A carpet of yellow maple leaves on the ground is transformed into a series of personal landscape observatories. Small yellow nests act as reflection spaces to experience and contemplate autumn and fall foliage in Vermont. Lying down over the yellow nests, the visitor’s perception of the landscape changes: he listens and feels each movement, isolating himself visually from the ample horizon; his glance goes towards a fragment of landscape. From that point, it is possible to perceive the scent, colors and sound of leaves.