Avenue

Abstract

The principle of interconnectedness fundamental to the forest as a body, and nature as an indivisible whole— includes me, the trees, and the unseen minute life forms that interconnect creating an unspoken but vital connection between all of us. As I ponder my relationship with trees and the forest including all things seen and unseen, I wonder if I have been communicating over all these years on a physiological or chemical wavelength. Why do I search for trees I have known, seeking them out as I would old friends and acquaintances? Why does their proximity compel me to reach out and touch their trunks, smell their bark, savor their colors, listen to their sounds, study their architecture? Beyond their obvious beauty and carbon-trapping, land stabilizing usefulness, I still cannot explain why I feel such primal pain when trees are lost. I am responsive to them as if I am their sister, daughter, or mother—a human entity in a community of vast networking tree villages. Gaining insight into the forest and the trees within it, I am entering into a completely new level of art making. This is reflected in all aspects of my creativity, from the conception of an idea to the manufacture of form, to the consideration of materials I utilize. A deepening awareness of my connection to the realm of all living elements is the foundation for my expression of all that I have loved, and all that I have lost. I never thought of myself as an environmentalist in my artistic expression. But it turns out that I am, by nature. I cannot be separated from the overarching directive of my own passionate concerns which are motivated from the core of my heart—it guides the artist who I have become, residing within me. My thoughts and my artistic vision have evolved simultaneously and instinctively, perhaps because I was a child entrenched within the environment of the woods. Awakening empathy for the sentient world of the environment through my artwork, is my essential quest. I hope and imagine that my ongoing artworks can shape tangible voices for lives in the form of sculptures that speak in ways other than our human language, reaching further than verbal disputes about what the future may or may not hold. My work attempts to engage our species as a community just as the trees themselves seem to have gradually become infused within me. Such is the powerful and instinctual wavelength that captured my childhood imagination and has become the fuel for my creative passion.