The House of Neighborly Service Life Center in east-central Loveland sprouted an indoor tree recently. But not one made from bark and branch, but instead of crocheted plastic bags and stucco, all meant to raise funds and inspire hope. Loveland artists Amelia Furman and Heather Fortin Rubald have recently constructed a life-size “tree” in the Life Center’s entryway, combining both painting and sculpture reaching from the floor to the ceiling.
The piece is not just for looks, though, as the hope is to add 10,000 leaves to its arching branches, each representing a $250 donation that would be used to pay off the Life Center building. “The tree represents the Life Center,” said Executive Director Cherri Houle. “It’s this overarching .
.. supportive piece in the community that shelters.
(It) is this covering piece that is about donors, about Life Center partners, about community partnerships working together to serve those in need.” Houle said the idea came to her in a dream of all places. She said around five years ago she had a dream where she was walking in the Life Center and she saw a tree on the wall, adding that in the dream she had a sense that people would need inspiration and resources in the near future.
She said that while she had the idea to turn this dream into a sign of hope, it also would be a good way to address the cost of the building that HNS inhabits along 11th Street and serve as a debt reduction campaign. She said when she had the dream five years ago, HNS still had about $2.5 million to pay off; the amount is now closer to $2 million.
Houle said despite her idea years ago, she was not able to get it going right away — that was until an anonymous donor gave her $25,000 after she told them about the idea and told her to “go find her artists.” Furman and Rubald’s talents came next. Furman, who was the first artist on the project, said she brought Rubald in with her to help create an art piece that incorporated both 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional art.
The pair have spent around a year designing what the tree could look like, checking in with Houle along the way to see what she thought. Both artists said that Houle’s vision for the project was deeply important to the creative process in creating something that relayed what the center does. “It just emphasizes how important inspiring hope is to the process,” Rubald said.
“It’s not just giving somebody maybe some rent assistance or giving them food to eat,” Furman added. “It’s giving something to them for them to hold in their mind that fills more than just their belly. That was super encouraging.
” They officially got started on creating it in May. The result is a painting and sculpture that stretches far overhead. Against the wall as you enter the center is a painting of a towering tree, thick at the base and tapering off to many branches toward the ceiling.
But along the base and up the branches the tree comes out of the wall, becoming a 3-dimensional sculpture melding with the painting. Rubald said the 3-dimensional aspect, like a lot of her other artwork, involved “upcycling,” where she takes various items and uses them in her art. In this case, the tree and its branches are made up of crocheted-together plastic bags covered in stucco at the base while the leaves above are made from old aluminum cans; several of these leaves, which are each meant to signify a $250 donation, have already been put up as the center has received more than $100,000 for this project ahead of its completion.
Furman said the idea of reclamation became even more important to her as the two worked. “What if we help people see these common materials that were normally taken for granted and that a lot of our culture and stuff see as trash and say ‘no, when we put it in a different context, when we put it together, it has a completely different narrative,'” Furman said. Houle said it was amazing to see the tree come from a dream into reality, adding she has loved hearing from people as they come in how much they admire it.
“(Clients) get a sense they mean something to us, because we care about the place we are creating,” she said. “We want them to feel welcome, we want them to feel like ‘hey we have thought of you.'” “Not just welcomed, but loved,” Rubald added.
“Who would care to put this in their hallway if they didn’t want people to feel loved?” Furman and Rubald said that, as of right now, phase one of the project has been completed, with the pair prepared to add more branches and more leaves as more donations come in. Houle said while the tree serves as a fundraiser, she described it as “the soft music in the background.” The greater focus, she said, is having something like this to welcome residents in and allow donors to see their impact on the organization.
“It’s an opportunity to be a part of creating something beautiful,” she said. “We’re an art community. That’s the other reason I think it’s so important to my heart is what we want to match the community we’re in and love what it is about — art and the expression of art.
So the Life Center, a community service with 21 nonprofits, we also want to be part of that vein of art.” HNS will be holding an open house at the Loveland Life Center, 1511 E. 11th St.
, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.
m. Saturday for residents to see the work in person and help put together bunches of leaves if they choose. No registration is necessary for the open house, but those looking to help create the leaves can register online at bit.
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