Art isn’t always meant to just be pretty. Sometimes the artist wants to shock you, or make you think, or maybe giggle uncomfortably. Meet Mary Samboethe, a fiber arts student at Mizzou. Last fall, Samboethe started work on a couple of collections exploring the ideas of femininity, fear and beauty as they relate to her own life. Take a look for yourself, and find out more about the ideas and creative processes behind her work.

If you find yourself driving down Old Plank Rd. some winter night, you’ll probably notice a tree – with more lights on it than you’ve ever seen on one tree before – shining like a beacon in the night. This tree has been dubbed “The Magic Tree,” and during the month of December, it has become somewhat of a local tradition for families and friends to visit the tree to admire its beauty and take pictures in front of it. Will Treelighter, the man behind the tree, has been lighting it up every year for the past 15 years, and spends about 200 hours each year putting up and taking down the approximately 75,000 lights.

A conversation with Will Treelighter, the man behind the Magic Tree.

Do you put the lights up and take them down every year? How many lights are on the tree?
I do put them up and take them down every year. The last couple years I’ve had approximately 75,000 lights on the tree. It takes about 120 hours to put them up, and about 80 hours to take them back down again, so it’s about 200 hours together.

Do you get help?
I get a little help from my son, who is 15. He helps mainly with sorting and testing all the lights before we get started. It takes a lot of patience to wrap them around all the branches. So, he’s usually enthusiastic at first about helping with that, but that wanes pretty quickly.

Where did the name “The Magic Tree” come from? Did you make it up or is it something that just kind of caught on?
I had some fans, a family with young children. The mom wrote a letter including a finger painting that her 2 year old had done that she’d cut out in the shape of a tree. They titled it “The Magic Tree.” She told me that that’s how they referred to it and said that they came every night to look at it while it was lit. I decided, well that was a good name for the tree, so I made a sign for it, and put it out there with some information on a flier.

At what point did you have to start putting up signs and fliers?
Well, I think I’ve had the sign out now for 6 years, and I’ve been doing the tree for 15. So, I guess 9 years I did it before I had a sign out there. And then each year it just kind of grew, trying to outdo myself, you know, from one year to the next.

Last year’s flier says that the tree costs about $10 a night to light up. As you get more energy-saving LED lights on the tree, do you see a noticeable difference in cost?

Well, I’m looking forward to seeing the difference of this year because I have more than 50% LED lights on it this year, which is a significant increase over last year. So, I’m hoping it’s going to be less, but I haven’t gotten the bill yet, so I’m not sure. But I should think that it would come out less than it did last year.

Do you get many complaints from neighbors?
A couple of years ago I got an complaint on Christmas Eve, no less, an angry phone call from one of my neighbors who found it difficult I guess to get into the neighborhood because of traffic, and was just fed up. That prompted me to put out a survey to all my neighbors, requesting them to let me know how they felt, giving them the opportunity to anonymously tell me how they felt about the magic tree, and the traffic congestion, about what to do about it, and so forth. Most of my neighbors, I think, are enthusiastic about the magic tree, so I’ve continued to do it.

I put out the extra signs asking people to not turn around in driveways and so forth, which holds up traffic and stuff like that. So far, so good, although this year the traffic is signific

antly heavier than ever before at certain times. I haven’t had any complaints yet, although I think I have at least one neighbor who tends to honk her way through the traffic when she’s trying to get in to the neighborhood. So, I think I’ll be putting out another survey after this season to see if there’s any further disgruntlement about it, and what their suggestions are about how to proceed for next year.

Are most of the people who come to visit pretty respectful of your yard? Do you ever get vandalism?
No, I haven’t had any vandalism. I’ve cut back the hours this year from turning the tree off at midnight to this year I’m turning the tree off at 11 because of just noise. It seems like the later it gets, the noisier people get. You’d think it’d be just the opposite, you know, out of respect for people who might be sleeping nearby. But the tree does kind of invite a party atmosphere, I guess. People are noisy right until the end, so I’ve been turning it off earlier just to reduce the noise so we can sleep at night. That’s the main problem as far as crowds go, in addition to the traffic.

What charities do you share your donations with?
On the homepage of the website, there’s the list of charities that I tend to donate to and that I’ve donated to in the past. I’ve been adding one each year. I’m up to 5 now, if we include the park across the street as one of them, which I added a couple of years ago. And I give 10% to each one of them so it amounts to giving half of the donations to charity at this point.

Is Will Treelighter your real name?
I came up with that name a couple of years ago. My middle name is William, and of course, tree lighting is what I do, so I just thought that it was a good alias to use for doing the tree, and my website, and so forth. I just enjoy having that second name. It’s a little bit playful.

To learn more about the Magic Tree and the philosophies behind it, visit http://www.magic-tree.org/

Do you have a picture of the tree that you’ve taken, or a picture of yourself in front of the tree? Send it to iknowcomo@gmail.com, and we’ll add it to our photo gallery.