Two years ago, we lost our dear friend and mentor, Christine Colarsurdo, a renowned calligrapher from Portland. At her memorial show, there was a poignant poem she had written and lettered about an oak tree, a fitting tribute given Christine’s love for nature. Her sisters later gave me the artwork. as a remembrance gift since I had planted a native oak tree in my yard.
Recently I took a class on Text and Texture with Yukimi Annand. Inspired by Christine and the poem, I chose the bark of my oak as my muse, seeking to imitate its patterns and textures in my calligraphy. The resulting piece featured the first and last lines of Christine’s poem, along with oak leaf stamps which were based on similar stamps that Christine made.
Did you climb trees with your friends to see who could climb the highest? Build a treehouse that was your refuge? Walk through a cool dense forest in the springtime or pluck a ruby red apple off a tree? Did you ever speculate on what kind of a tree we would be? Hmmmm. Oak? Birch? Maple?
On a hot summer evening, did you run to a tree for safe base when you played tag?
Just as the rings of a tree embody the stories of the tree, so too we carry the stories of trees. These stories inspire us to renew our sense of wonder. They connect us to one another through shared experiences as they deepen our understanding to our connection with nature.
Janelle is inspired by nature to explore her interests in painting and handlettering.
At our gathering, she shared that in Spring when the tulip trees are in bloom, she enjoys visiting familiar trees in the community to admire their annual show.
From this, Janelle painted a pink bloom and chose a quote about life for one round.
For the other one, she brush lettered an encouraging Bible verse along with a painting of a tree of life.
Debra Brown is a pharmacist who’s approaching retirement to pursue creative interests. She’s exploring watercolor, charcoal and drawing and has also dabbled in mixed media collage.
Debra’s interpretive rounds, both excerpts from Mary Oliver poems, are both literal and figurative. She likes poetry that uses the setting of the natural world to speak about living our lives.
“In one round, I chose to use watercolor as the entrance to the door of the woods. In the Zentangle piece, I let the various patterns interpret how life can change and go in different directions, and still be a beautiful result.”
Mary Oliver’s poems inspire me to connect with the beauty and serenity of nature whenever possible.”
Anne Bradley is an art consultant, exhibit judge, and instructor in Northern California. She has been the featured artist at the KVIE Art Auction and has won numerous awards for her innovative paintings and sculpture for over 30 years.
An adventurous and creative spirit, she’s attracted to welding and casting bronze and aluminum, not only as sculpture but also with her abstract painting
Anne’s collage and mixed media art inspires people to take another look at familiar, often organic objects around them and see them in a different light.
When we cleaned out our attic last week, I rediscovered my art portfolios from long ago including an unopened package from my parents that to my disbelief contained examples of my school years work from kindergarten to college that my dad had saved. Like father, like daughter. I had to laugh at this generational inclination to record our histories. I had done the same thing for our son.
Early drawing of trees
These old drawings intrigued me because I noticed a stream of subjects that held my interest from one year to the next. I drew dozens of trees, many women in fashionable outfits, and figures from weddings. In high school and college, I filled large newsprint pads with drawings of models in every position imaginable. I created a zillion graphic designs as well.
Tree Studies in 2021
I have been amazed at the quantity of work, which as I leafed through the stacks of paper, helped me to see my progression from awkwardness to confidence as an artist. If only we all had such similar detailed information to look back on for signs of our growth in other areas of our life, we could say to ourselves, “Good enough.”
Leaf studies
I thought of my mantra: “practice, practice, practice,” and realized I had done just that. Now my question is: what do I keep?
Three Exhibitions to Explore in One Place! The new exhibition “Tree Time + Silos” by artist Amanda Love presents a photographic documentation of the prehistoric and endangered species, The Metasequoia (or Dawn Redwoods) with a sneak peak at “Silos” an outdoor exhibition also inspired by the Dawn Redwoods coming this fall. “Treewhispers” displays a “forest” of handmade paper and artistic exploration honoring trees by Pamela Paulsrud and the late Marilyn Sward. “It Sounds Like Love” by artist Cadine Navarro creates a place of encounter with native Ohio prairie seeds.
As a boy I knew there was more to trees than just limbs to be climbed and heights to be reached. There was something mysterious and magical about them. They were living creatures of infinite sizes and shapes and each of them had a story to tell. And these trees told their stories slowly, quietly, and poetically.
We all have at one time in our life experienced a tree in one way or another.
We climbed trees with our friends seeing who could climb the highest, built a tree house that was our refuge, walked through a cool dense forest in the springtime, plucked a plump red apple off a tree, speculated on what kind of a tree we would be.
On a hot summer evening, did you run to a tree for safe base when you played tag?
Just as the rings of a tree embody the stories of the tree, so too we carry the stories of trees. These stories inspire us to renew our sense of wonder. They connect us to one another through shared experiences as they deepen our understanding to our connection with nature.
The Nature x 4 Exhibition also features the “2022 Audubon Photography Awards”, “Feathered Portraits” photography exhibition by Donna Winters, and sound/meditation “It Sounds Like Love” by Cadine Navarro. It’s a wonderful collection of nature! Don’t miss it!
It was such a joy to share the creative papermaking process with adults and children alike last Sunday. Parent’s taught children. Children taught parents. Onlookers eased in to join the fun. Stories were shared and trees were celebrated.
Many thanks to Artists Book House for sponsoring the event with the Evanston Arts Council Special Projects Grant. Additional confetti to celebrate community building activist Jamie Thome ; amazing artist, fiber and pulp provider Melissa Jay Craig; Evanston Library and librarian (now papermaker) Laura Antolin; volunteers extraordinaires Michael Swierz, Katie Kucera and ABH Intern Kerrigan; and to all who shared in the papermaking/tree storytelling event. It was beautiful!
Visiting the willow was my reason for joining my uncle and cousin on their spring/summer fishing trek to the Washington Park Lagoon.
Three blocks from our house was my grandmother’s flower garden where they dug up the worms for bait.
I packed a picnic lunch because they never ever caught any fish.
While they baited the hooks at the water’s edge I climbed into the welcoming embrace of the sturdy weeping willow branch that extend out over the surface of the lagoon. With my back against the trunk and my feet dangling over the branches just inches from the water’s surface, I sang and cloud surfed and danced my whispered dreams. I skipped across the water with dragonflies, floated on the surface with willow leaves, inhaled spring and exhaled summer into the last autumn sunset.
“Elderflora: A Modern History of Ancient Trees” by Jared Farmer
Sunday, October 23 2022 – 1:00pm
Event Speaker: Jared Farmer
Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History
Upper Gallery, Widener Visitor Center Morris Arboretum of the University of Pennsylvania 100 E. Northwestern Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19118
Please join us on Sunday, October 23, 1:00–3:00 pm, for the official book launch of Elderflora: A Modern History of Ancient Trees, by prize-winning author and historian Jared Farmer.
Humans have always revered long-lived trees. But as Jared Farmer reveals in Elderflora, our veneration took a modern turn in the eighteenth century, when naturalists embarked on a quest to locate and precisely date the oldest living things on earth.
Moving from the ancient past to the present and traveling the world from India to Australia to Mexico to Wales, Farmer introduces readers to some of the most cherished remaining big old trees in existence while taking a deep dive into the botany of longevity and the discipline of tree-ring science. It is his hope that we can all channel our shared respect for these trees into collective action to preserve them for future generations.
A presentation by the author will be followed by Q&A and time for book signing. Advance registration is required, and space is limited.
SPECIAL OPPORTUNITY: All event registrants will receive complimentary admission to the Morris Arboretum on October 23 to spend time before or after the launch event to explore the grounds. Please visit www.morrisarboretum.org for hours.
In anticipation and celebration of the upcoming 2023 exhibition at Audubon, I’m combing the archives to honor the commensalistic relationship of birds and trees.
The Warli Painting traditions in Maharashtra are among the finest examples of the folk style paintings. The Warli tribe is one of the largest indigenous tribes of India, living in both mountainous and coastal areas along the Maharashtra–Gujarat border. It is believed that the Warli carry on a tradition stretching back to 2500 or 3000 BCE. The Warli culture is centered on the concept of Mother Nature and elements of wildlife are often focal points depicted in Warli folk art.
Having been brought up in Mumbai, the capital of Maharashtra, I was exposed to this art since I was a kid. Unfortunately, I didn’t delve into this art form until I took a class last year with Sampada Kodagali Agarwal, who brought back the love I had always felt towards this art form done by the Warli people.
Warli painting is a simple, ancient and an eloquent way to express one’s thoughts and emotions. Only with some simple drawings and the use of two contrasting colors, a lot can be expressed. For this book, I used the brand “Khadi Papers” made in India from cotton, grown in the state of Karnataka. The word “Khadi” means hand-spun cloth, but unlike your average cloth, the word “Khadi” holds a very special place in India’s movement towards freedom and independence.
The flora and fauna of Warli art has always fascinated me, so when I read this paragraph from Katherine May’s book, ‘WINTERING’, I felt I was able to combine my love for calligraphy, lettering and Warli art into this accordion book to tell a story. Just as the author Rilke reverenced winter as the season for tending to the inner garden of the soul, Katherine May writes about “Resilience, the Wisdom of Sadness, and How the Science of Trees Illuminates the Art of Self-Renewal Through Difficult Times. May observes, with life-tested clarity, is the key to wintering — to emerge from the coldest seasons of the soul not only undiminished but revitalized.”
The excerpt I chose for the accordion book was one in which May draws an analogy between the human experience and trees: “The tree is waiting. It has everything ready. Its fallen leaves are mulching the forest floor, and its roots are drawing up the extra winter moisture, providing a firm anchor against seasonal storms. Its ripe cones and nuts are providing essential food in this scarce time for mice and squirrels, and its bark is hosting hibernating insects and providing a source of nourishment for hungry deer. It is far from dead. It is in fact the life and soul of the wood. It’s just getting on with it quietly. It will not burst into life in the Spring. It will just put on a new coat and face the world again.”
Treewhispers 