Twelve Trees #2

Twelve Trees #2

Maren Hassinger, 1979

This wire rope sculpture is located in front of Building E and at Arts Drive at the Visual Arts Center. It was originally commissioned by CalTrans. It was gifted to Cal State Fullerton in 2012.

“… Indeed, if one had been driving along the 405 Freeway near the North Mullholland Drive exit from 1979 to this summer, one might have seen amongst the rank scrubby growth Hassinger’s site specific work TwelveTrees #2, an orderly row of “trees” constructed from unraveled steel rope. With its curling strands like flying hair in a whirling dance, these hi-tech trees came to typify the kind of nature/culture tensions and material transformations that defined much of her work in the 80’s and 90’s into the present. Her outdoor installations varied from wiggly galvanized wire rope that appeared to bend and move with the wind to fields of wiry wheat sheaves. …” From Inside the Artist’s Studio (2011)

Maren Hassinger (1947– ) was born in Los Angeles. After studying dance and sculpture at Bennington College, she completed her MFA in Fiber Arts at UCLA. While in Los Angeles, she began making sculptures with bent, twisted and frayed wire rope and created and participated in numerous performances in Los Angeles. Now based in New York City, Hassinger continues to create sculptures, installations, videos, performances and public artworks that deal with equality and our changing relationship to nature.

Hassinger has exhibited widely in the United States and abroad. She is the recipient of many awards and honors including grants from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Gottlieb Foundation, Anonymous was a Woman and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women’s Caucus for the Arts. Since 1997 she has been the Director of Rinehart School of Graduate Sculpture at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore.