click to enlarge - Courtesy Of RL Photo
- "Timik" by Rob Hitzig
The current group exhibition at Mad River Valley Arts in Waitsfield, titled "RISE: Trees, Our Botanical Giants," offers a visual corollary to the Howard Nemerov poem "Trees." That reads, in part: "To be so tough, and take the light so well, / freely providing forbidden knowledge / of so many things about heaven and earth."
Using a variety of mediums and materials, 28 artists from several states express the enduring practical, mythical and mystical relationships humans have with trees.
Brooklyn artist Thomas Crawford displays two 52-by-18-inch digital prints of 1950s-era topographic maps that he procured and adapted from the U.S. Geological Survey. The intricately drawn contour lines, landscape patterns, watershed branches and "trunk" of a river give viewers a bird's-eye perspective of Earth's repeating patterns.
In contrast, the spherical, panoramic photograph "Cherry Blossom Trees," captured by Cincinnati artist Greg Buening, places the viewer on the ground, looking up through a ring of spring green and pink blossoms.
Nemerov's "forbidden knowledge" might exist in "Spirit Trees: Bhutan, South Carolina and New Mexico, Untamed, Tribal and Sacred." Waitsfield photographer Julie Parker writes, "The concept of a 'Spirit Tree' holds a profound significance within indigenous cultures, embodying a spiritual connection to the natural world."
click to enlarge - Courtesy Of MRV Arts
- "Spirit Trees: South Carolina, Untamed, Tribal and Sacred" by Julie Parker
Parker made digital images of spirit trees from three locations, then layered and reflected them to create a klecksographic, or inkblot, effect. Printed on 33-by-25-inch matte photo paper, the velvety images suggest tree dwellers in both natural and mythological worlds.
Montpelier artist Rob Hitzig writes, "The intent of abstract geometric art is not immediately evident." But, given the exhibition's theme, his wall-hung wood sculpture "Timik" suggests a tree with exceptionally lively growth rings. The roughly 5-by-4-foot irregular heptagon made from quarter-inch-thick Baltic birch is painted with geometric, vividly hued "rings" nested inside one another.
While much of the work in the show celebrates what humans claim from trees, "The Ruin," a 9-by-11-inch mixed-media piece by North Carolina artist Diane Bronstein, illustrates reclamation. With thick layers of embroidery thread, Bronstein embellished a black-and-white photograph of a church vestibule. She used various shades of green and brown to build up trunks, twisting branches and dense foliage that exaggerate the depth and contrast in the image.
"It Was an Inside Job (Says the State Forestry Service)," created by James "B'fer" Roth in partnership with a busy beaver, is an actual tree. Stretching eight feet across a gallery wall from a 28-inch-high stump, the sculpture seems to be of a tree in mid-fall. Roth, a Warren resident who builds tree houses for a living, writes, "Simply being amongst the trees will always have me in my 'happy place.'"
During mud season, when spring sap awakens but tree branches are still skeletal, a visit to "RISE" might give Vermonters a head start to that happy place.