California fir, 2019
Standing 20 feet high, 3 feet wide, and 3 feet deep, Alien is comprised of a fir tree that grew two trunks, flipped by Madsen so the tips are at the bottom and the roots at the top. It was designed for the KSAT as a gift from the artist. It received Best of Show in 2018-19 from the Cloverdale Sculpture Trail, Cloverdale, California.
Madsen’s previous installation on the trail was Nobori, made in 2010 of carved pine and fir with redwood, purpleheart, walnut inlays, and splints.
Madsen started his artistic career in the early 1970s. He explains his artistic process as “vast installations which slowly turned into reasonably discreet sculptures. Simultaneously my urge to [depict] history and some kind [of] accurate representation of the world and how I fit into it (my original college major was political science) began to assert itself.”
