Green art, live evergreens on display this year at holiday Festival of Trees

Cindy Larson

Nov. 5, 2009 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) -- A few of the entries in the Embassy's Festival of Trees will be a little shorter and fatter, and a lot heavier this year.

They'll be greener, too.

That's because this year, on the event's 25th anniversary, five of the 46 trees will be live evergreens. Four others won't be real trees at all, but "green-art" trees, fashioned from found objects and recycled materials.

Dana Poffenberger, marketing director, came up with the idea of making this year's festival more eco-friendly, featuring alternatives to fresh-cut trees or artificial trees made in China.

Poffenberger spent her first 10 years living in Oregon, an environmentally conscious state.

When the family moved back to Indiana, her parents wanted to keep those eco-roots and constructed something called an earthship in Noble County -- essentially an eco-friendly home built of recycled tires and tin cans.

Poffenberger wanted more green alternatives at this year's festival.

The five live evergreens are "not small," Poffenberger said. They're about 5 feet tall from the bottom of the branches to the top, 6 feet when you add in the root ball. She said they're "huge around." The root balls will be placed in wood boxes built from unusable boards donated by Weigand Construction. They'll be decorated with low-energy LED lights donated by Lowe's. (NYSE:LOW) The alternative-energy tree, one of the five live evergreens, is sponsored by Don Ayres Honda.

Lights will be powered by energy generated by patrons pedaling a bike hooked up to the tree. It will be decorated with ornaments made from scrap construction materials.

"We put our heads together and came up with quite a number of things," said local designer Ann Beeching, who is working on the ornaments with Candace Imbody, owner of Construction Recycling Solutions, and Lisa Miller. All three are members of Northeast Indiana Green Build Coalition, an organization that promotes green and sustainable living.

They're putting sparkles on bent nails and gluing them together to make "all kinds of weird stars," Beeching said. Nuts and bolts will be strung from cardboard tubes. Shredded paper will become tinsel. The tree will be planted after the first of the year.

Four other live trees, sponsored by Indiana Michigan Power (NYSE:IJD) (OOTC:IMIGP) (OTCBB:IMIGN) , will be decorated in eco-friendly style and will be donated to the Fort Wayne Parks and Recreation Department after the festival to be planted locally.

In addition to the live evergreens, four local artists were selected to create green-art holiday trees.

Josef Zimmerman is using recycled glass and driftwood; the Art Farm will use found-object art; T.A.G. Art Co. will use everyday disposable materials; and artist Sayaka Kajita Ganz will use recycled materials from the kitchen.

Ganz is making her tree out of an old table and shelving, with a chandelier to provide a point at the top. A fluorescent tube will run down the middle of the tree, illuminating bowls and angels made out of forks and knives. When it's done, she expects it to be about 7 feet tall. It will be made of found objects, mostly related to the kitchen. It's even got a title already, "Angels from the Kitchen."

The Embassy's theme of renew, reuse and recycle doesn't stop with trees. It also will use a set of mechanical elves salvaged from a Cincinnati department store in 2003 for its Harrison Street window display this year.

"They needed a whole lot of tender, loving care," Poffenberger said.

Fort Wayne Metals rebuilt or replaced the failing motors, and local sculptor Don Johnson replaced the fabric elves' faces, hands and feet with clay renditions. Designers David and Kathy James from Corner House Creations helped Johnson create a storyline for the elf display.

Newstex ID: KRTB-0071-39483757