We have received such a wonderful response from visitors to the exhibit. Many have been inspired to share their own artwork, words or published works that have brought them the same emotional response as this extraordinary exhibit.
We would like to share those with you so you, too, can be inspired by TREES…
PLANTING TREES
– Wendell Berry’s The Country of Marriage
(contributed by Amy Haines and Richard Marks)
In the mating of trees,
the pollen grain entering invisible
the domed room of the winds, survives
the ghost of the old forest
that was here when we came. The ground
invites it, and it will not be gone.
I become the familiar of that ghost
and its ally, carrying in a bucket
twenty trees smaller than weeds,
and I plant them along the way
of the departure of the ancient host.
I return to the ground its original music.
It will rise out of the horizon
of the grass, and over the heads
of weeds, and it will rise over
the horizon of men’s heads. As I age
in the world it will rise and spread,
and be for this place horizon
and orison, the voice of its winds.
I have made myself a dream to dream
of its rising, that has gentled my nights.
Let me desire and wish well the life
these trees may live when I
no longer rise in the mornings
to be pleased by the green of them
shining, and their shadows on the ground,
and the sound of the wind in them.
TREES: feeling inspired…
When I am Among the Trees
by Mary Oliver
(contributed by John Schratwieser)
When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”
Woven Mulberries, Abandoned Oaks, and Gilded Larches: Exploring the Tree in the History of Art at Adkins Arboretum
Join Benjamin Tilghman, assistant professor of art and art history at Washington College, for this lecture series that considers some instances where artists have made trees the primary subject of their artworks. The series aims toward developing a deeper understanding of the relationships among humans, trees, and the environment as a whole. These stand-alone lectures can be enjoyed individually or in a series. Fee: $15 members/$20 non-members per program.
Renaissance
Sunday, October 13, 1–2:30 p.m.
Romantic era
Sunday, October 20, 1–2:30 p.m.
Contemporary era
Sunday, October 27, 1–2:30 p.m.
“From the Narrows” – Meredith Davies Hadaway
Climate Change & the Environment
(contributed by Darius Johnson)
Concerned about local resilience to sea level rise and extreme precipitation affecting Maryland towns & communities? Interested in learning about federal legislation to reduce carbon emissions? Join us Thursday, September 19, 2019, at the Chester River Yacht & Country Club, 7738 Quaker Neck Road, Chestertown, for presentations on these hot topics!
Read more…
‘Painting’ The Ghost Forests Of The Mid-Atlantic Coast
By Claire Harbage
(sent by Michael Kahn)
Massive stands of silvery trees rise skeletally out of saltwater marshes at the edges of the Chesapeake and Delaware bays, a significant part of the coastlines of Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey. A few dead or dying leaves cling to the trees’ branches, but mostly, they are bare.
‘Offsetted’ Art Exhibit Explores Humanity’s Relationship to Trees
(contributed by Grace Mitchell)
Tree branches, tree trunks, slabs of wood, leaves, trunk cores, and even a small whole pine tree fill the Ross Architecture Gallery in Columbia’s Buell Hall. The items are mounted on and suspended from metal rods, and bathed in a yellowish light that brings out the warm browns of the wood.
Rebecca Solnit: How Change Happens
“If you think you’re woke, it’s because someone woke you up.”
(contributed by Ken Schiano)
We are building something immense together that, though invisible and immaterial, is a structure, one we reside within—or, rather, many overlapping structures. They’re assembled from ideas, visions and values emerging out of conversations, essays, editorials, arguments, slogans, social-media messages, books, protests, and demonstrations. About race, class, gender, sexuality; about nature, power, climate, the interconnectedness of all things; about compassion, generosity, collectivity, communion; about justice, equality, possibility. Though there are individual voices and people who got there first, these are collective projects that matter not when one person says something but when a million integrate it into how they see and act in the world. The we who inhabits those structures grows as what was once subversive or transgressive settles in as normal, as people outside the walls wake up one day inside them and forget they were ever anywhere else.
Hi Carla,
I’m sure you’re swamped w/e-mails, but had to share this. I sent the video around to some friends and one responded with this link to show he’s planning to attend in Paris: https://www.fondationcartier.com/en/exhibitions/nous-les-arbres
– Grace (Mitchell)
Aloft
(contributed by Anne Keer Charles)
As part of a series of changes in 2015, the Biggs Museum in Dover, Delaware, commissioned a new sculpture for their entry façade. The result is 1,200 aluminum blackbird silhouettes hanging both outside and inside the building. In the words of artist Erica Loustau, “the building becomes engaged in the artwork.”
“Remembrance”
(contributed by William Willis)
Unprecedented Media Attention Focused On Climate Change This Week and Beyond
(contributed by Grace Mitchell)
Led by The Nation and Columbia Journalism Review (CJR), more than 250 news outlets from across the U.S. and around the globe will be part of a concerted push this week of increasing their climate news coverage – dubbed “Covering Climate Now” — with the goal of “strengthening the media’s focus on the climate crisis.” Altogether, the news outlets have an audience of more than 1 billion people worldwide. And here is the biggest news of all — Variety reports — and we can confirm that “NBC News has launched a new “climate unit” that will present reports throughout this week, says Janelle Rodriguez, the NBC News senior vice president who will oversee it.”
From The New York Times:
Sliding Down the Climate Slope
The widely recited “12-year deadline” to avert catastrophe is wrong — and right.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/19/opinion/climate-change-12-years.html
This is quite shocking, and note that “forest birds have dropped by 1 billion individuals….”- contributed by Grace Mitchell
3 Billion Birds Across Many Species Have Disappeared in North America
Over the past 50 years, the conservation movement in North America has famously helped protect some of the most iconic birds from extinction, including bald eagles, wild turkeys, white pelicans, peregrine falcons, Kirtland’s warblers, and California condors. But a new study in the journal Science shows that while those rare birds were recovering, total bird numbers were plummeting, even among some of the most common backyard species.
Read more…
The Crisis for Birds Is a Crisis for Us All
The mass disappearance of North American birds is a dire warning about the planet’s well-being.
Nearly one-third of the wild birds in the United States and Canada have vanished since 1970, a staggering loss that suggests the very fabric of North America’s ecosystem is unraveling.
The disappearance of 2.9 billion birds over the past nearly 50 years was reported today in the journal Science, a result of a comprehensive study by a team of scientists from seven research institutions in the United States and Canada.
Read more…
Birds Are Vanishing From North America
Read more…
(contributed by Constance Del Nero)
(contributed by Emily Squires Levine)
(From Carla – Emily has been represented by CREATE art.craft.design since our opening!)
On Friday, September 27, Into The Forest will be in full bloom at the Noyes Arts Garage of Stockton University in Atlantic City, NJ. Laura, Julie and Emily have transported all of the amazing elements to the New Jersey shore and are combining them to create another forest in the first floor gallery of the Arts Garage!
Bottle Caps and Stilts from Hope Clark on Vimeo.
(video essays contributed by Hope Clark)
Phineas Harper writes in Dezeen about our dependency on growth and why it’s toxic:
(contributed by Grace Mitchell)
Degrowth is a designed reduction of total energy and material use to realign society with planetary limits, while improving people’s lives and distributing resources fairly. It is an economic model that recognises that the route to greater welfare for all is not one of more extraction and expansion, but of more sharing and co-operation.
Architects and urban designers, toiling daily at the coalface of speculative urban development, are complicit in the perpetuation of growth but we are also in a unique position to contribute towards a move away from it.
Architecture is the armature of culture, shaping and shaped by the economy in which it is constructed. What could architecture be like in an economy based on nourishing culture and nature rather than GPD?
Thanks for this — actually read the article in Dezeen on Saturday: https://www.dezeen.com/2019/09/25/oslo-architecture-triennale-architecture-degrowth-phineas-harper/ and thought it was interesting, in part because it’s another “de” type of thinking that I seem to be finding all over the place right now!! When I saw this, I had just been reading something about a new concept of progress that the author (Jenny Odell) terms “manifest dismantling” in discussing the growing response to damages from Manifest Destiny thinking exemplified by current efforts to remove dams and restore ecosystems, among many other things, and had also just seen this about a plan for Miami: https://www.ourdailyplanet.com/story/climate-restoration-finally-an-issue/ which says ” we must conserve, but in equal measure, we must fight to restore. That’s becoming a bigger part of the conversation around climate change.” And somehow this all seems to fit with things I’ve been reading about “decolonizing” in areas from art/culture to finance!
Of course, it all also sounds somewhat impossible/fanciful, etc., but viewed against the “fairy tales of endless economic growth” as so beautifully named by Greta Thunberg the other day, also can seem much more hopeful/reality based!
– Grace Mitchell
(contributed by Richard Marks)
Climate Change is Coming for Annapolis
As Sea Levels Rise, So Do Ghost Forests
New York Times
Up and down the mid-Atlantic coast, sea levels are rising rapidly, creating stands of dead trees — often bleached, sometimes blackened — known as ghost forests.
The water is gaining as much as 5 millimeters per year in some places, well above the global average of 3.1 millimeters, driven by profound environmental shifts that include climate change.