Honey Locust Tree Relocation with artist David Horvitz

There are 55 Honey Locust trees growing in New York City’s Zuccotti Park, the central locale of the 2011 Occupy Walls Street protests. Artist David Horvitz collected the seeds from those trees in 2012 and is now germinating them during his artist residency at New York’s Clocktower Gallery. On Saturday, May 4, the artist and a group of volunteers will carry the little trees, one per person, to Stamford. The group will take a Metro North train to Franklin Street Works, which is 40 minutes outside of NYC in Stamford, Connecticut. The plants will continue to grow there through June 16, adding to Franklin Street Works’ exploration of sustainability, art, and activism in the current exhibition Strange Invitation. For this collaborative performance, Franklin Street Works and David Horvitz are enlisting participants to help carry the trees from Clocktower Gallery to Connecticut, stopping off at nearby Zuccotti Park en route. Horvitz sees one person carrying one plant as a poetic component of the project, adding, “I really like the image of someone going across the Atlantic in a boat, carrying a small apple branch or rose cutting, ready to plant it wherever they end up.” In germinating the Honey Locust trees, David Horvitz also shares how we can learn through stopping to consider the temporality of trees, explaining, “The slowness of their pace is not subject to the world of the instantaneous and the immediate that we live in.” The Honey Locust trees can live up to 150 years and will continue to germinate at Franklin Street Works during the Strange Invitation exhibition. In June, Horvitz and Franklin Street Works will find permanent homes for the trees, ideally at public institutions such as museums, libraries, and college campuses. We still need participants to join us on this exciting, participatory project! Franklin Street Works hopes that you can join us in taking part in this collaborative performance and to bear witness to the relocation of these Honey Locust trees. Connecticut participants will meet up at Franklin Street Works at 10:30 am or join us at the Stamford Train Station for the 11:03 train, on the third car from the end. NYC participants will meet up at 12:30 pm at the Clocktower Gallery. To sign up and be a part of the performance please email your RSVP to Sandrine@franklinstreetworks.org. For information on FSW support and options in purchasing Metro North tickets, please email terri@franklinstreetworks.org.