Mark Prier

Artwork

Grey County Pastoral: Tree Circle, 2003-present

Grey County Pastoral: Tree Circle is a living installation in Grey County, Ontario, Canada. It is a circle of spruce trees enclosing five granite boulders. Within the trees, the boulders form a compass rose pointing to the cardinal directions. Begun in 2003, many of the trees have not yet reached maturity.

“...in some sense the pastoral is not about the country but about what the country means to the city and what the past means to the present.” (19)

Rebecca Solnit
As Eve Said to the Serpent. Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 2001.

Grey County Pastoral is an ongoing project attempting to engage with the past (and present) of rural Ontario by focusing on Grey County. It aspires to deal with the area’s history as imagined, nostalgic, and ‘pastoral,’ and as heinous, dispossessing, and colonizing. It is not so much about revealing the true past as much as it is about revealing the imagined past that continues to affect the present.

A landscape blueprint showing a ring of trees enclosing five boulders that are extended with earth to form a compass rose. The is a opening in the circle of trees just east of north. The blueprint is labelled: Grey County Pastoral: Tree Circle. Looking past a spruce tree and a tamarack tree to see a compass rose formed by boulders, earth, and grass. A circle of spruce trees, most of them quite small, encloses the compass rose. In the distance, a forest is visible. A compass rose formed by boulders, earth, and green grass encircled by spruce trees, most of them small. In the distance, a forest is visible across an open field.
A compass rose formed by boulders, earth, and grass encircled by spruce trees, some of them full size but most quite small. There is a gap in the tree circle marked by a lone tamarack tree. In the distance, a forest is visible. Looking past a snow-laden spruce tree to see a compass rose formed by boulders and earth completely buried in snow. A circle of spruce trees, most of them quite small, encloses the compass rose. In the distance, a forest is visible. A compass rose formed by boulders, earth, and brown grass rises above the snow. A woman in a brown coat sits on the central boulder. The compass rose is encircled by spruce trees, most of them small. In the distance, a forest is visible across an open field. Looking past a spruce tree and a tamarack tree to see a compass rose formed by boulders, earth, and green grass. A circle of spruce trees, most of them taller than an adult, encloses the compass rose. Just behind these trees is a forest.