Cypress Guitar

In General LeValle, Argentina seventy year-old Pedro Martin Ureta delivers a creative twist on the fact that a guitar is made of trees with a tragic love story as it's heart.  This particular guitar is unique in that it is made of 7,000 trees, can never be played, and can be seen from space.  Ureta embedded the design into his farm many years ago, and maintains it to this day, as a tribute to his late wife, Graciela Yraizoz, who died in 1977 at the age of 25.

Pedro Martin Ureta's late wife, Graciela Yraizoz,
who died in 1977 at 25. Photo courtesy of WSJ

One day while traveling in a plane over the pampa, Ms. Yraizoz noticed a farm that, through a fluke of topography, looked a bit like a milking pail from the air, her children say. That's when she started musing about going one better and designing the family's own farm in the form of a guitar, an instrument she loved. (1)

As with many ambitious young men, Mr. Ureta was too busy to tend to his wife's project and later, after her passing, decided to complete the work as a tribute to her.  Today, Mr. Ureta says his wife's passing turned his life in a more philosophical direction. ¨I stepped back for a time,¨ he says. He read about Buddhism. Mr. Ureta says a line by an Argentine folk guitarist and writer, Héctor Roberto Chavero Aramburo, stuck in his head: "I galloped a lot, but I arrived late all the same." (1)

His giant guitar is an unusual example of what's known as land art, in which forms are built into the natural environment, said Nancy Somerville, chief executive officer of the American Society of Landscape Architects. (1)


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