WESTFIELD – After bringing tree art to Amherst and West Springfield, Harold Grinspoon Art Works set up a display of its Epiphany piece in Westfield’s Kane/Wojtkiewicz Park.

Madeline Calabrese, the curator for Harold Grinspoon Art Works said after a lifetime in realty and philanthropy Grinspoon took up sculpting seriously when he was 87 years old.

“When he was 87, he started sculpting. He was interested in finding wood that had been tortured by nature, either burnt, dead, or twisted. He was an avid hiker and would always find interesting pieces. Early in his life, he would commission others to make something from them

Ever since Grinspoon took an increased interest in tree art, his style has evolved with each piece.

“He did natural finishes on them initially before he evolved into more and more twisted trees to create more interesting shapes when they were rearranged. Then he got into figuring out how to paint them and finding good preservatives. He tried paint, he tried staining, and he’s tried charring, so he has a whole bunch of sculptures in each of these different segments of his discovery,” Calabrese said.

While his art started as much larger displays, Calabrese said some of the newer ones are smaller so they can fit indoors.

“Most of his are really big, they are in the 20- to 30-foot range. In the last couple of years, he’s ventured into using steel rods, stainless steel balls, acrylic rods, and using them for structural purposes and design. Recently he’s tried to scale pieces to the 12-foot range so they can be indoors,” she said.

Rather than selling each piece for display, Grinspoon loans them out and covers the installation costs.

“Because he’s a philanthropist he doesn’t sell these, he loans them. He doesn’t charge for the installation and carries that cost himself. So, he’s been very generous in making them available to other places,” she said.

Calabrese said Westfield Planning Board Vice Chair Cheryl Crowe reached out about putting one of Grinspoon’s pieces of art in Westfield.

“She reached out to me to see if it would be possible to get one installed in Westfield. Because they are costly to install, Mr. Grinspoon usually checks out the location to make sure it’s high visibility, and from there the Parks Committee had decide on a location,” she said.

Through his realty company, Grinspoon gets shipments of oak wood to his house, which he uses as the base for his tree art.

“He gets a lot of shipments of live oak wood, his realty company has property in Florida where they have to prune live oaks as they get into threatening buildings or parking lots so when those pieces come up, he looks them over,” she said.

One of the inspirations for the Epiphany piece was a bend and the rot in one piece of wood.

“He’s really looking for a unique shape and this one had a really cool bend in it. He has an excellent tree cutter who is like an extension of his own hands, he draws the line in chalk and the guy follows them. This one had a really large rot area in it, and he had it filled with cast acrylic so that it would lend strength to the piece,” she said.

Calabrese said the name came from the steel ball in the middle of the piece.

“The word Epiphany came from the glass ball with people looking at it, the reflections of who is with them, and the personal insights they have while looking at it,” she said.