The story begins with a dead tree. In 2013, I came across a maple tree that had died in the Cottage Home neighborhood in Indianapolis. I asked the property owner if I could take it. They agreed. I stripped its bark by hand, then cut it down and sanded the entire surface of the wood. I had big plans for that tree.

The previous year, I had participated in Turf, a multi-artist exhibition presented in conjunction with Super Bowl XLVI in Indianapolis. My installation, Better or Worse?, was my first experience projecting imagery directly onto objects. The technology felt like a revelation — the ability to transform a surface into a moving canvas captured my imagination. After that show, I was eager for another opportunity to create a video-mapping installation, so I approached the Indianapolis Arts Commission (Now IndyArts) and they were agreeable to an exhibition in their Gallery 924.  

Over the ensuing months, I designed several pieces of the installation. (See my installation page for videos of that installation). I was happy with so much of the plan, but I had the nagging feeling something was missing. And that is when, on my drive to work, I pulled up alongside that dead maple in my Cottage Home neighborhood. I knew instantly what I had to do. The Dream Tree was added as the culminating piece in the exhibit. But time was running out to get a piece that massive prepared for installation, and there were no guarantees that mapping the tree would even work.

In the final installation, the tree was mapped with a single projector and I suspended speakers above the tree to fill out the effect. The imagery was an abstract engagement with issues of climate change. It was mesmerizing and immersive and I considered it extremely successful.

Five Years at The Urban Chalkboard

After the Gallery 924 exhibition, the tree found a home at The Urban Chalkboard, a café in Carmel operated by Tonya Bergeson and Jessica Beer. For five years it stood in the space, greeting customers with the same video and sound as before. When The Urban Chalkboard closed after a 5-year run, Jessica helped me find what would become the tree’s permanent home.

A Pandemic Pause, and a New Beginning

Carmel Clay Parks & Recreation was planning to renovate an underused section of the Monon Community Center into an indoor children’s playground. The tree was slated to be part of it. We placed it in storage while construction plans took shape — and then COVID-19 arrived, and everything stopped.

The tree sat in storage for three years.

When construction resumed, so did our plans. And as the playground took shape, I began to think seriously about what this installation could become with the technology and tools available now. What had once been a single-projector work could be something entirely different. I wanted to map the entire tree with video from three directions and bathe it in abstract imagery that depicted the changing seasons.

In August 2025, I reached out to Adam Glasscock — a Media Arts and Science alumnus who had worked on the original 2012 installation as my student — and we began developing new content from the ground up. The brief was simple and ambitious: we would map the tree completely, from every direction, with no gaps. And make it feel magical.