People might expect trees on UF’s campus to turn orange this fall. What they may not expect is some trees turning blue.
While most trees seldom get a second glance in the whirlwind of activity around campus, starting Monday, they’ll become works of art after a vibrant makeover.
The trees will be temporarily painted blue as part of “The Blue Trees,” a social art action started by Australian artist Konstantin Dimopoulos.
Dimopoulos paints the trees a color not usually found in nature to trigger the imagination and emphasize how little trees are noticed in day-to-day life, even though they make human life possible, he wrote in an email.
“I am not against forestry,” he said, “but unsustained and unmanaged ecocide of old growth forests will turn the planet into a desert.”
“The Blue Trees” is coming to Gainesville for Arts and Humanities Month and to honor the 150th anniversary of the Morrill Act, which created land-grant universities like UF. A kick-off ceremony for the exhibit will be at noon Oct. 17 near the Reitz Union Colonnade, said Anna Heineman, administrator for the UF Art in State Buildings Program.
The blue colorant is water-based and environmentally safe, Heineman said. Depending on the weather, it should wash away with rain in six to nine months.
Dimopoulos has painted trees in New Zealand, Canada, Australia and the Northwestern United States. His future plans include New York City and Austria.
Heineman said the College of Fine Arts worked with the Horticultural Sciences Department to promote the exhibit and identify which trees met the artist’s requirements of being less than 40 feet tall and having smooth bark.
Dimopoulos plans to paint during the course of a week with the help of volunteers, Heineman said. The trees will be painted in clusters around campus.
Signs with QR codes will be placed near trees so passersby with smartphones can scan the codes to read information about each species, Heineman said.
In Westlake Park, a hardscape park in downtown Seattle that is the most recent site of the exhibit, the honey locust trees are still a “very bright blue” despite having been completed about six months ago, said Dewey Potter, communications manager for the Seattle Parks and Recreation Department.
“People were everything from mystified to delighted to somewhat angry,” Potter said. “Most people, when we explained what the colorant was made of, were satisfied.”
Some Seattle residents worried the colorant may harm the trees or the environment, but overall, the response to the exhibit has been positive, she said.
“Personally, I love them,” Potter said. “People don’t notice the trees around them. If it gets people talking, it’s done its job.”
