PITY THE TREE
by Elisabeth Kley



In comparison to very tall trees, the young San Francisco artist Kal Spelletich suggests, people are losers. "Cosmicism and Contemporary Forestry from Northern California," Spelletich’s summer exhibition at Jack Hanley Gallery, includes several sepia photo collages of giant Sequoias, Redwoods, Monterey Pines and palm trees. Snapshots of sections of their sometimes-100-foot-high trunks are lined up vertically, as if they cannot be contained in one photograph. Antique coloring also refers to their great age, and as they narrow away to the sky, they seem to be fading away into the past.

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