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NORTH ATTLEBORO - A tree grows in North Attleboro.

This particular tree, however, is a cultivar of silver ductwork, its trunk and limbs adhered by silver duct tape, and is representative of a growing culture which ignores the environment, overgrown by a focus on individual technological greed.

Well, that's sort of the idea, said North Attleboro High School art students, who have teamed up to create the tree, which towers about 13 feet.

It's part of their installation for "High Art," an exhibition of high school art at the Attleboro Arts Museum set to open May 28.

North Attleboro will be one of eight area high schools to conceptualize, design and produce multi-media, large-scale installations for the juried display in the Ottmar Gallery. The installations must be based on a modern-art master of the 20th or 21st century. For North Attleboro students, the project is an outgrowth of juniors and seniors joining up for the first time this year for a separate art show that will take place before the Attleboro museum exhibit.

There will be a presentation showing the students' work on the tree-like sculpture at the school's art show on Friday.

While the project's message might be a bit of a downer, it will have its "playful" side too, senior Chelsea Frucia said.

The tree will grow from a digitalized-like base and include huge backboards with bushes and leaves imitating circuitry, said junior Maria Caudle, 17.

Caudle's father, Bob, owner of New England Air in Foxboro, donated the ductwork as well as tools and studio space for students to work on the project, said art teacher Christopher Flanagan.

The seeds for the project were planted first: A modern art master will sprout from that, said Frucia, who has had her hand in both the upcoming junior/senior art show and the installation for the museum's exhibition.

"It's awesome," she said of the project, and the opportunity to be involved in such a large installation at a museum.

"We've all worked so hard, weekends, during vacation," Frucia said of the more than a dozen students involved in cultivating the tree.

And a lot of work awaits to plant the installation within the museum, said Kyle DiMare, a junior. "Part has to be attached to the ceiling."

Each limb, each elbow, has been individually fashioned from individual pieces of duct pipe. The students, overseen by art teachers Flanagan and Christina Estey, are hoping to make their tree a permanent installation elsewhere - perhaps at the school or at a local business - following the exhibit at the museum.

SUSAN LaHOUD can be reached at 508-236-0398 or at slahoud@thesunchronicle.com.