The mourning of trees - Graham Sutherland Building: School of Art & Design
The School of Art and Design has stood for over 50 years. The linear lines of concrete and glass, create a solid structure against the Coventry skyline. This is a space that holds the memories for many. This space was home to mature trees that my father would have seen in their infancy, as he attended his evening classes of the previously named Coventry Polytechnic. These protected trees were destroyed, these majestic trees I took for granted as I dashed or meandered to and back from my art classes at the school. These trees are no more.
These protected trees harboured the organic tendrils of outstretched branches against the skyline, they moved softly in the breeze and held the ground in a storm. Many had passed these trees, taking for granted and unquestioning their occupation of space.
Against linear squares and geometric changes from another era, the trees had grown rotund and strong. Creating shelter from the rain and wind and an intriguing play area for children on their way home to and from the city.
Blunt stubs, charred, cracked and gouged. Once the tree stood majestic breathing in the the poisonous carbon dioxide and absorbing the sun through entwined mass of roots and leaves that changed through the seasons. The textured bark filled with small insects and organisms. Once the tree stood giving us life giving oxygen, once the trees stood in a busy city. Cars and buses, lorries and trucks would travel by, and the trees stood.
The trees no longer stand, what is left is a blanket of woodchip creating the mounds of a forgotten and discarded quilt. No longer stretching over the land, gracefully and elegant its brittle and dry remains lie in an untidy heap.
This unruly space will be replaced by an architects vision of order. A welcome relief for accessibility not catered for in the 60s, will be followed by concrete steps and tiled space with order of three new trees. But you do have to wonder why the the protected trees had to be sacrificed, in a world that should look for permaculture and suitability.
The trees were felled during the pandemic and the space waits for the changes to be made, the diggers to deconstruct, to create more rubble and noise. But as we wait the land gives way to the beauty of the hardy thistle and her outstretched energy,
Will the memorial stay in loving memory, did the person that made the speech for the Carbon challenge realise the fight for green issues would still be the same fight in 2020.
This space and building will change, this building along with the name of Graham Sutherland will be no more. This change will only be found in the text and images of the past, as those that remember become fragments of a story. Coventry Moves. Where is it moving to? This is a mixed media project combining digital and analogue mediums.
