In the summer of 2010, my father and I took a day trip from Seattle to the Butchart Gardens in Victoria, British Columbia. In the early 1900’s, the site was at a limestone quarry owned by Robert Butchart, who used the stone to produce cement. When all the limestone was exhausted from the site, his wife Jennie Butchart had arranged for massive amounts of top soil brought in from the surrounding farmland to line the floor of the huge pit. The Sunken Garden was one of the first of the many gardens that would become the Butchart Gardens. From the lookout you can see an incredible spread of annuals, flowering trees and shrubs.
White Trunk Tree
A white trunk aspen tree grows in the steep embankment of the gorge at Taughannock Falls State Park in Trumansburg, NY. The north side of the gorge receives more sunlight than the south side. For this reason, deciduous trees grow here, while on the opposite side (from where I am standing), evergreen, confiners and hemlocks are more common. While hiking the trail in late May, this tree caught my eye because of its distinction among the chaos of greenery.
Sprig and Sprout
After a very cold winter, warmer days are finally here. The landscape is changing rapidly. I found this solitary seedling emerging from a groove between concrete and granite. Life is springing up all around, even in the most unpredictable places.
Longwood Gardens
This month, Lou and I visited Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pa., following a short trip to Philadelphia. Most of the outside gardens were still dormant, so we stuck to the Conservatory and took in the Orchid Extravaganza that was on display. The Conservatory was breathtaking, and I loved the thoughtful integration of plants within the light-filled architecture. Leaving the soggy, gray day behind and entering the balmy temperature and oxygen-rich air of the Conservatory, it was immediately summer.
ca. 1890
This maple tree in Smith Woods (an old growth forest in Trumansburg, NY) dates back to 1890. This was also the same year our house was built about a mile up the road. Imagine the things this tree has seen in it's 125 years on the planet!
Winter Trees
I happened upon this window display in Berlin while I was there visiting friends in the summer of 2009. This image is in stark contrast to my other photos from the trip, filled with the bright skies and lush greenery. Looking back, it makes me wonder why this wintery scene was there at all in the middle of July, but here it is.
Aglow
On a trip to NYC this December, Lou and I made a point to see the famous Rockefeller Center tree. This was no easy task. The streets were flooded with people, and our sense of direction was lacking after seven hours of walking around Manhattan. This was my first trip to the city during the Christmas season and at every turn I marveled at the absurdity of lights, elaborate decorations and intricate window displays. We weaved our way through the crowds to get a view of this 85 foot Norway Spruce covered in lights. This was as close as we dared to get, but It was worth the effort and it made for a nice bookend to our day in the city.
Happy New Year!
The Onlookers
It's Christmas tree season again and I recently thought back to this image, although these trees are far too large for any interior. These looming spruce trees occupy a wide footprint dotted across a grassy field. This C-print was part of a series of photographs I printed in 2009 on yard spaces across Western, Central and the Finger Lakes regions of New York state. This photo was taken in Etna, NY.
Duotone
Two varieties of sedum, ‘Dragon’s Blood’ and ‘Angelina’, form a vibrant duotone on the green roof of Milstein Hall at Cornell University. The sedum ‘circles’ increase in diameter as they move closer to the edge of the building in the direction of the gorge.
Unfortunately this rooftop isn’t an open space yet but I had the opportunity to venture up there and walk around briefly. This peaceful plateau fully sustains itself in the variable weather of Ithaca, NY. It's an incredible planting and is worth a peek from the windows of Sibley Hall or from the ivy-covered stair tower.
Lake Ontario Maple
A maple silhouetted against Lake Ontario at Southwick Beach State Park.
Art & Garden
This gem of a tree was on display at the C.V. Starr Bonsai Museum at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens. This particular image seemed to capture the mood for that day being followed by a stop at the Brooklyn Museum to see Ai WeiWei's current exhibition, According to What?.
The Brooklyn Art & Garden tickets are the way to go!
Transmission Tree
A cell phone tower disguised as a very tall pine tree off Interstate 485 in South Charlotte, NC.
Cumulus
Last week I had the opportunity to be an artist in residence at the Institute for Electronic Arts at Alfred University. The Experimental Projects Residency is a unique facet within the School of Art and Design, New York State College of Ceramics, where I received my BFA nine years ago. The residency invites artists from around the globe to reside in the tiny town of Alfred, NY for one week to make great work. I was honored to be part of the growing list of accomplished artists to pass through the IEA.
My project at the IEA centered on the distortions within expired Polaroid film. I began by scanning the cloud-like chemical stains that had formed on the Polaroid film with prolonged storage. I was printing these forms through several passes on the IEA’s drum-based IRIS printer, layering the composition in stages. I was interested in the idea of creating a digital print similar to a traditional printing process, building the print in layers. Each time I sent a file, I would anxiously wait for the drum to stop spinning so I could see what I had. It was a very tactile way of thinking about digital prints. From there I would decide where I needed to add more form, density or color. This process was all about letting go of some of the control and allowing the image to accumulate onto the paper.
To ground these airy, water-filled clouds, I paired them with some of my recent landscape photographs of open fields and distant trees. You can read more about the project here on the IEA’s blog.
Tiny Trees
I recently came across some 35 mm film from my trip to Germany in the spring of 2007. Tara Cooper and I traveled there together for an international printmaking show and residency at the Kloster Bentlage Museum in Rhine. We traveled by train though Frankfurt, Cologne and other small towns along the Rhine River. While passing through one train station (which one, I can't recall) we stumbled upon this intricate train set in the lobby.
It's curious, looking back at these images, to see that my framing centers on the foliage in the landscape, opposed to the buildings, trains or bridges. These photos were taken prior to my plant-based works, but they hint at some things I was thinking about during that time in graduate school. These images are also of interest to me because of a project I'm currently working on that involves constructing miniature landscapes. I've been thinking more about scale relationships in photographic images.
Unearthed
This remarkable work by Jack Elliot, entitled Victus (2013), is part of the Beyond Earth Art exhibition currently on view at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art through June 8th. Sitting at the entrance to the museum, this exhumed sugar maple has been meticulously cleared of dirt, clay and rocks, and it's root system cut to a circular form.
Elliot is an Associate Professor of Design and Environmental Analysis at Cornell University. More of his work can be found here.
At the top of Stratton Mountain
Last winter Lou and I took a snowboarding trip to Stratton Mountain in Vermont. We arrived after the snow had come though. The clouds had cleared and the ski was a vibrant blue. The snowfall caked the pine trees in thick covering, merging them into a mass of confectionary forms. It reminded me of a bright, warm day at the beach where the sheer vastness of reflective surface area creates a light-emitting landscape. Despite the elevation it felt warm and calm up there in the sun and the snow, everything melting into bold color and light.
A Balsam Fir
A small tree farm on the outskirts of Trumansburg, NY.
Slowly Sinking Twin Pines
Three Topiary Trees
A set of trimmed trees in Blue Bird Square in Olean, NY. I love that someone has this job. These three were looking freshly trimmed on the day I was back in my hometown for the Southern Teir Biennial (exhibiting one of my tree prints, Pruned Plume no less).
This image may resurface as a print one day as well.
P.S. These rounded trees are also really magical when covered in lights around Christmas.
A tree from a window
September of last year I was visiting Jackson, WY. I was there as part of an exhibition at the Jackson Hole Center for the Arts, showing with a great group of artists I had met at the Ucross Foundation– Jenny Dowd, Mayme Kratz and Ruth Boerefijn. Here are a couple tree studies from my trip and some exhibition images. The three-channel video made for some interesting shadows. This show was the first time I had onlookers dance in front of one of my projection installations (to no sound other than wind). Very awesome. They even got me to join in.