Ran Morin (; born 1958) is an Israeli artist, known for his statues involving full-sized living trees. Much of his work is found in Israel, notably the Olive Tree and surrounding park on the

Ramat Rachel Ramat Rachel () is a kibbutz located in central Israel. An enclave within Jerusalem's municipal boundaries, near the neighborhoods Arnona and Talpiot, and overlooking Bethlehem and Rachel's Tomb (for which the kibbutz is named), it falls unde ...

kibbutz A kibbutz ( / , ; : kibbutzim / ) is an intentional community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. The first kibbutz, established in 1910, was Degania Alef, Degania. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economi ...

. He currently lives in New York.Ran Morin's personal site
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Early life and work

Morin began his creative work in the mid-70s with the construction of a computer model of the illusion of abstract forms of movement, at the

Weizmann Institute The Weizmann Institute of Science ( ''Machon Weizmann LeMada'') is a Public university, public research university in Rehovot, Israel, established in 1934, fourteen years before the State of Israel was founded. Unlike other List of Israeli uni ...

. In the early '80s he began to focus on integrating nature (mainly trees) with modern sculpture materials.

Selected works

''Olive Columns''

''Olive Columns'' is an environmental sculpture at the edge of

Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...

, in the middle of the Olive Park. The park is near Kibbutz

. This work was finished by Morin in October 1991. It consists of three 15-meter columns, topped by three olive trees, now decades old. There is a series of steps at the base of the pillars leading up to them. A computerized system built into the statue monitors the soil at the top and fertilizes it over time.Photos of the olive poles
The columns are part of an artistic installation with three paths leading away from the triangular base of the trees. Flanking the mouth of one of these paths are two 2-meter tall eggs made of rock, cracked in half at the top, out of which smaller olive trees are growing.

''Floating Orange Tree''

Among the city streets of old Jaffa is a hidden work of Morin's known as the ''Floating Orange Tree''. Finished in 1993, this is a small orange tree that is elevated off of the ground by a large earthenware jug hung by metal chains from the walls of houses nearby. The tree is growing out of the pitcher, trying to break it. Morin sought to emphasize the increasing world of separation between man and nature, as "creatures that grow in containers." This statue is hung only a foot or so off of the ground - enough to see its shadow, but not so high that it seems about to fall down. Morin has used hanging trees elsewhere: another one adorns the lobby of the

Dan Eilat Hotel Dan or DAN may refer to: People * Dan (name), including a list of people with the name ** Dan (king), several kings of Denmark * Dan people, an ethnic group located in West Africa **Dan language, a Mande language spoken primarily in Côte d'Ivoir ...

(finished in 1995), and a hanging maple tree can be seen in London's

Regent Park Regent Park is a neighbourhood located in downtown Toronto, Ontario built in the late 1940s as a public housing project managed by Toronto Community Housing. It sits on what used to be a significant part of the Cabbagetown neighbourhood and ...

(1994).

References

External links

About Ramat Rachel and its statues
Living people Israeli sculptors 1958 births {{Israel-artist-stub