Exhibit Dates:

November 29, 2025 - January 10, 2026 at Ivester Contemporary

From Ivester Contemporary:

Funeral for a Tree, Steve Parker's second solo exhibition at Ivester Contemporary, is a requiem that a live oak performs for itself. When a 65-year-old tree in Parker’s front yard died of oak wilt, he cut the trunk into “wood cookies” and transformed them into playable records, each encoded with migratory birdsong from species that roosted in the tree across its lifetime. Sheng virtuoso Jipo Yang interprets these songs on the sheng—a Chinese mouth organ associated with rebirth and the phoenix—which appears throughout the exhibition in multiple forms. Across the gallery, the records spin on a custom wooden turntable, while ventilators and CPAP machines give breath to discarded shengs sourced from Taipei flea markets, sounding a slow memorial dirge. The project emerged from Parker’s recognition that his grief for the tree echoed the loss of his father to cancer—both slow, inevitable declines where care could not prevent loss. As the wood cookies dry and check, their audio fades and distorts, static and loss accumulating like a memory changing over time. The installation also includes abstracted turntables fitted with horn drivers, a live-oak branch driven by a camshaft that slowly unfurls to brush a wind chime, and a large bass drum heaped with wood shavings that tremble to birdsong. A plant-like, valve-driven instrument built from salvaged brass, medical breathing bags, and sheng reeds anchors a weekly concert series, with guest artists from Austin’s experimental music community activating the sculptures in new configurations.”