Steely nature: using iron-willed concentration, a Washington, DC, sculptor immortalizes local trees with national acclaim - Earth Keepers

American Forests, Autumn, 2002 by Charles Enloe

Even after being felled by weather, disease, or old age, our nation's famous and historic trees live on in the minds of many Americans. Ira Bloom wants to make sure those memories live on forever. Since discovering AMERICAN FORESTS' Historic Tree Nursery eight years ago, the Washington, DC, sculptor has been turning steel into beautiful models of some of America's most important trees.

Working from his studio in a dilapidated former car repair shop in downtown Washington, Bloom has made models of more than 25 trees, including the Maryland Liberty Tree and what was known as the Lincoln Copper Beech in Washington. The real estate investor combines technical skill with a love for the trees that are his subjects.

"Historic trees give us a link to the past," he says. "They put a face on history." A much-used treehouse and the tree-lined adventures of Tarzan and Robin Hood made Bloom realize early on that "trees were my thing."

That enthusiasm resurfaced 20 years ago, when Bloom, who had done woodcarving and made wire figures, started focusing on trees as his subjects. He experimented with a few early projects, including his 1982 piece "Tree Songs," which used pipe segments to portray the wind singing through a tree.

Bloom's current fascination with making exact replicas of trees was jump-started when he discovered a copy of AMERCAN FORESTS' 1964 book Knowing Your Trees in the organization's Washington headquarters. He repeatedly photocopied pages from the out-of-print book before finding a used copy in a bookstore. When he read about famous and historic trees in American Forests magazine, he knew he wanted to sculpt them.

The sculpting process, which takes about 60 hours for each tree, is involved and tedious. First Bloom chooses a tree and photographs it from different angles, usually ending up with 40 or 50 different views. He then heats steel rods to create the tree, starting with multiple half-inch rods for the trunk and using progressively thinner rods, winding up with ones that are 1/16-inch for the smallest branches. He then adds more steel for texture.

Bloom's trees are leafless, reflecting the simplicity of winter trees that he finds so appealing.

"I like a tree in wintertime when you can see the skeleton," Bicom says. "That's the real beauty of a tree....it's sort of like a tree undressed."

As Bloom himsell' points out, he often seems to have made it to his subjects just in time. He sculpted a copper beech weeks before it was cut down due to disease. His model of the Wye Oak--the largest white oak in the country and one of only four trees on the National Register of Big Trees since AMERICAN FORESTS began keeping track in 1940--was made a year before the Maryland tree was felled in a thunderstorm.

But his closest call came with the Maryland Liberty Tree on the campus of St. John's College in Annapolis. The tulip poplar, the last remaining of the trees used as gathering spots by patriots in the 13 original colonies, was cut down in 1999 due to disease. On the day of the cutting, St. John's hired Bloom to immortalize the tree in steel. That model is at St. John's now.

Most of Bloom's sculptures, however, are sold to individuals, usually people with a specific interest in that tree, such as the property owners. Bloom says he can understand why people want models of the trees near them.

"People identify with the trees they grew up with," he says. "A model is a 3D work of art that gives a greater essence to the tree than a photograph [does]."

Ira Bloom's steel tree sculptures can be viewed at www.treesculptrues.com

Charles Enloe is an intern at American Forests magazine.