Treewhispers

Artwork by Rick Garlington and Thomas Burns

This summer while the Treewhispers installation inhabited the Kalamazoo Nature Center in Michigan, the Texas Kaligrafos Calligraphy Guild (spearheaded by Thomas Burns, “Bur Oak”) gathered for numerous papermaking, art and storytelling sessions. (See previous posts for many of the activities and artwork and stories.) The group then gathered to bind over 1100 paper rounds into 33 twelve foot trees—all while creating their own nature-inspired broadsides for a parallel exhibition.

Plans for a 2-month exhibition were abruptly overturned a week prior to installation with the gallery unexpectedly closing its doors. Needless to say, disappointment was abounding—and rightly so after many months of dedicated planning.

I’m greatly appreciative of the connections, support, and contribution by so many and want to assure the group from something I’ve learned as a vessel for this project for 20 years— is that Treewhispers has its own rhythm. The project has always had an energy of its own—like seasons, not always congruent with ours might I add. I suppose I could liken it to planting a tree with a lot of nurturing and watering initially, knowing that there is a time for new growth and blossoming, a time of great autumn beauty and time of dormancy—each season significant to the cycles in life and all in its own time.

Also, I’d like to share words I heard in a speech from Andy Goldsworthy as he was reflecting on an unexpectedly postponed installation at the MCA. It was February and the landscape artist had proposed freezing a stone cairn horizontally from the museum’s wall—but it was February in Chicago and Chicago’s weather can be fickle. He made clear his disappointment and debated with himself as to whether the project was a failure—how to proceed—how do you give a talk about something that hasn’t happened? He concluded that he would return when the conditions were right and complete the work “and in the meantime, the stones will be waiting—and there is poetry in waiting.”

As I head to The Dawes Arboretum in Ohio for the new installation I know that the rounds, the stories, the “trees”  in Texas are waiting—and there is poetry in waiting.