HANGING TREE GUITARS (Mark)

Since 1961, Piedmont Arts has been a part of Martinsville in Henry County, Virginia. 

The mission statement: "Piedmont Arts inspires and engages the diverse Martinsville-Henry County community and surrounding areas through visual arts, performing arts and arts education."  The museum is located about 60 miles north of us and we have been to see several of the exhibits.

Cheri had shown me this photo and told me the exhibit was called Freeman Vines, Hanging Tree Guitars.  I thought the exhibit was about the guitars made by Freeman Vines, photographed hanging from different trees and such.  The actual meaning is much darker.

The guitars were made with mostly recycled pieces of what most people would see as junk:  tenant-farmer cabin wood, an old chicken trough, pine from a tobacco barn step, recycled pickup metal, and recycled electronics.  Most of the plastic pieces used seemed to be from broken-down televisions. 

But once built, the guitars were amazing in quality.

If you hold your phone camera to this QR Code and click on the link that comes up, you can hear the music that was playing in the exhibit space.

The details and the tonal quality he was searching for led to Vines mixing varied pieces and geometries.

A close up view of multiple pieces and electronics harvested from other instruments and objects:

Freeman Vines made guitars from many different sources, scavenged from wherever he could find things.  His rural upbringing had a significant effect.

Visually the guitars made from the wood of the hanging tree were much darker:

but in some of them Freeman Vines could still find beauty:

Two of Vines' accompanying statements:

For more about Freeman Vines and his guitars, read the really great article "Whispers in the Wood" in Our State magazine.