Most days, you can find Michael Devineunderatreenear theMeadowridgeshopping centre, in Howard Drive, but while he might be homeless he is far from idle, and, in a strange way, he has one of the worst storms to hit Cape Town in living memory to thank for that.
ThetempestonWednesday June 7 toppled trees in the Meadowridge common, and it was there, while looking at the shattered pieces of pine that Michael had a jolt of inspiration:why not make something out of the wood, but what?
The answer, he says, came to him in a dream in which he saw himself making the Tree of Life, an archetype that spans religions – with varying symbolic associations to fertility, purity, wisdom, immortalityandmore-andis also referenced in science, showing evolutionary relationships between species.
Michael remembers the symbol from a pendant his mother once wore and how, as a child, he had greatly admired it.
“I have always been interested in art and more probably strange art, not your day to day art,” he says.
Now he spends his days making his Tree of Life sculptures.
He never thought of selling them, until a woman asked him if one of his pieces was for sale.
Now he has a book of orders. It takes as much as two hours to create a Tree of Life sculpture. Michael doesn’t use power
tools only things he picks up along the
road.
If you are interested in buying one of the sculptures, you can find Michael at the Meadowridge shopping centre.
