Rewilding the American Lawn

These two Rose of Sharon trees graced the front lawn of the artist’s property in the 1950s when the typical American lawn was perfectly manicured. Serena Kovalosky began rewilding the lawn in 2020. When both trees died a year later, the artist left the tree snags standing for a year before deciding to preserve them as artwork. They were cut down and placed together on the lawn, upside down, in the form of a dance of defiance of a “perfect” landscape aesthetic that is detrimental to the land’s natural ecosystem. There is no protective varnish on these pieces as they are allowed to naturally change, deteriorate and eventually return to the earth.