5,000 silk flowers and 17 taxidermied peacocks

Behind the scenes of PAFA’s massive new artwork.

Sculptor and photographer Petah Coyne’s latest work — two massive installations — uses silk flowers, taxidermied peacocks, and apple trees. Actual trees. That sculpture, Untitled #1383 (Sisters—Two Trees), almost 14 feet tall and 23 feet wide, uses two apple trees that Coyne removed from an orchard.

It’s part of “Rising Sun: Artists in an Uncertain America,” a new group exhibit collaboratively put on by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the African American Museum in Philadelphia. Coyne and 19 other artists were asked whether the sun was rising or setting on American democracy.

In response, Coyne created Untiled #1383 and her other work Untitled #1551 (Color of Heaven), in her West New York, N.J., studio. Then, she and her team broke down both pieces — including those two giant trees — packed them up, and moved them 94 miles to Philadelphia.

Her team planned out every point in the journey: from exiting the studio, to ground transport, to entering the museum, and to the actual installation. “We think about every doorway, hallway, elevator, and truck size that the crates will traverse,” said Jessica Maliszewski, Coyne’s senior project consultant.

The result is a breathtaking display of peacocks, flowers, and dripping wax symbolizing past and future generations of women who are working to change what America means to its people.

As for the experiment of American democracy? That, too, seems to be a work in process, with different iterations and floor plans being devised continuously to varying ends. But Coyne has hope in the future.

“All the young people I know are so good. They seem much more encouraging of each other, whereas my generation was a bit more judgmental,” she said. “They don’t seem to care about money or getting ahead. What they care about is making the world a better place.”

In Untitled #1383 (Sisters—Two Trees), the two trees are joined together with pipe fittings and stained with a dark matte. Resting on the branches are 17 taxidermied Silver Pied Peacocks and clusters of silk flowers, dipped in wax and shades of red. Layers of navy and black ruched velvet cover the roots of trees.

It took one month to pack all of the parts of the installations into 43 crates.

The crates were delivered in six truckloads. For the largest crates, the team used six art handlers, a forklift, and studio staff to maneuver them out of the studio and onto the trucks.

There are nearly 5,000 silk flowers in Coyne’s works on display. “We developed about five formulas of pigmented wax to achieve the final colors, and every flower was dipped individually,” said Miku Sekimoto, Coyne’s senior studio assistant.

Through site visits and floor plans, Coyne determined a placement plan for each bouquet months in advance. Yet, the team went through at least three iterations before the installation was finalized.

Each installation represents a different generation, Coyne said. The apple trees, the peacocks, and silk flowers are of hers; the generation that came of age during the vast turbulences of the 1960s and ’70s.

Several years ago, Coyne visited PAFA’s skylight space and knew that she had to return someday. “I told myself, ‘I want to do something up there,’” she said. “This is the most amazing space I’ve ever seen.” When Coyne was approached for this exhibition, she asked for this room and the skylight.

The vibrant bouquets suspended under the skylight signify the present: the millennial generation onward. Coyne believes that the country is in good hands. While she sees similarities between the two generations, the younger one will accomplish more, she said.

Eleven wax-dipped bouquets hang upside down in chains of varying lengths. The bouquets are of assorted bright colors and are named after women — Zora Neale Hurston, Louise Bourgeois, Toni Morrison, and so on. Toward the other side of the level are more India Blue and Black Shouldered peacocks.

Both Maliszewski and Sekimoto were in charge of assembling the hanging bouquets in the ceiling. The process involved setting up struts in the skylight and then installing chains for each bouquet. They were then placed onto a carrying pole and transferred to the skylight on a scissor lift. PAFA’s framework of I-beams and steel trusses helped.

The skylight can be accessed through a stairway designed specifically for the exhibition by Nate McBride, architect and longtime collaborator of Coyne’s. The challenge was to build a stairway that would bridge the two installations without damaging anything else around them. “Here, at the top of the stairs,” Coyne’s Instagram post reads, “is a small ladder that viewers are invited to ascend to poke their heads through the glass ceiling and into another realm.”

“We spent months working with Nate and his team to find the perfect design that would complement the tree and provide the skylight experience that Petah wanted to give each viewer,” Maliszewski said.