THE TREE OF THE DEAD

One of our most exciting projects to date has to be The Tree of the Dead.  Michael was commissioned to make a huge tree for a Latin restaurant in St. Louis, Missouri.  The theme of the restaurant is to be The Festival of the Dead and they were looking for a feature piece to put behind the bar, as sort of a back splash.  The owners of the restaurant were very brave and gave Mike free rein to create at his will.  The result was a 13ft wide by 8 ft high, 500lbs tree.  The Tree of The Dead has approximately 350 bones welded around an internal frame.  The bones were all roughly sanded to give a shinny textured appearance like bark.  Bones were cut out in various shapes including hands, feet, femurs, tibias, rib cages and skulls.  At the base of the tree are layers and layers of hands and feet that extend like roots. There are seven branches on the tree that extend into a hand that can hold a bottle of liquor.  On the tree sit three laughing skeletons.  The tree broke down into three sections for crating and transportation to the USA.  In the end, the Tree of the Dead took three people five days to complete.  The grand opening for the restaurant is scheduled for Halloween night, 2009.