Chalking the outlines of dead trees

Chalk Outline Tree
Armando Fontes (graffiti) and Catia Rissi (photographer)

Armondo Fontes and Catia Rissi call their chalk outlines of cut urban trees a "collective denunciation as an environmental graffiti." Fontes, who lives in the city of Belo Horizonte in southeastern Brazil, saw that trees were being cut and the city was not replacing them. He decided to engage in a guerilla art protest:

With the stumps that remain after cutting the trees, Fontes draws what would have been the shadow of the tree that once existed there. "I thought to refer to the universe of the cartoon. The silhouette made ââwith chalk also recalls the demarcation made ââat crime scenes. It is ephemeral, since the chalk quickly dies out, but everything is recorded in the picture," says Fontes. (source)

The medium of fat sidewalk chalk readily lends itself to the hyperstylized, cloudlike outlines of trees, which look a lot like kids randomly doodled them. For me, the lightheartedness of that first impression doesn't dispel easily, so it's hard to take the outlines as the vehement indictment I think they're intended to be. But it's still a provocative project.

Via Environmental Graffiti