Several months ago I was out in Wimberley, visiting my favorite hill country art gallery, and stumbled upon a huge, lovely tree sculpture made of wire. I was so impressed with the piece that I immediately decided to learn to make something similar myself. So yesterday, I picked up a dollar worth of florist’s wire and found this article. Thus armed, I embarked on my first attempt to prove Joyce Kilmer wrong.

An hour of fooling around with wire and my leatherman in the front yard yielded this:

Altogether, a credible first attempt, I think. A few things I learned along the way:

• Green wire makes everything look like a cactus.
• While tree roots are, in fact, as extensive as the branch systems, they’re usually below ground. Thus, using only 1/3 of the length for roots makes more sense than 1/2.
• Modeling the upper branches is hard once the lower ones are done. Next time I’ll experiment with working from the top down instead of the bottom up.
• Leatherman tools are awesome.