TREE TALK

Tree Talk: Artists Speak for Trees

Thursday, July 30
10am PT, 11am MT, 1pm ET

The beauty and mystery of trees has long been a subject for artists, and more recently, concern for the survival of forests (the lungs of our planet) has been paramount. Each month, artists working in a diversity of media will share their artworks and ideas about this most essential and extraordinary living being.

Tree Talk is moderated by Sant Khalsa, ecofeminist artist and activist, whose work has focused on critical environmental and societal issues including forests and watersheds for four decades.
 
Co-sponsored by Joshua Tree Center for Photographic Arts

Helen Glazer  Glazer will present her ongoing photographic series of the Southeast Asian fig trees widely planted along neighborhood streets in Los Angeles and other cities on California's Central Coast. With their humanoid forms, marked and scarred surfaces, and roots powerful enough to lift sidewalk slabs, each individual has a distinctive animated presence and conveys a story of the relationship between nature and human activity in the urban environment. Glazer's photography and photo-based sculpture are profoundly influenced by scientific insights on the physical forces that shape ecological environments, including human activity. A 2015 participant in the National Science Foundation Antarctic Artists and Writers Program, her solo show of that project, "Walking in Antarctica," will be toured nationally by Exhibits USA (eusa.org). Other recent exhibitions include the Center for Art + Environment, Nevada Museum of Art and Baltimore-Washington International Airport. She has received a grant from the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation for her upcoming photographic project in Greenland and will be the next Cary Institute for Ecological Studies artist-in-residence.

Rita Robillard  Robillard will focus on her artwork inspired by her residency at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology. It was there that she worked with the National Oceanographic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and studied with foresters at the Cascade Head Experimental Forest, part of Oregon State University’s Research Forest Studies program. Her experience at Sitka culminated in And then Again…Rifts on the Forest and Time at the Augen Gallery. The nature of place and ecology is the focus of Robillard’s artwork; for the last thirty years, she has lived in the Pacific Northwest. Robillard received her MFA and BA degrees from the University of California at Berkeley and attended Cooper Union in New York. She has taught at UC Davis, the San Francisco Art Institute, Rhode Island School of Design, and WSU and a Professor at PSU where she chaired the Department. Robillard has served on the board of the College Art Association as Chair of the Visual Arts Committee, on the Executive Committee, and on the editorial board of the Art Journal.

Adam Wolpert  Wolpert has been painting trees and exploring his relationship to place for thirty years. His current series of ancient oak tree portraits brings together deep observation with a great love for these mysterious and magnificent beings. In these trying times meditating on these models of resilience, interconnectedness and beauty is a powerful practice. Wolpert’s paintings reflect a lifelong engagement with Nature. His earlier naturalistic outdoor work speaks of his relationship with the land, in particular his home in West Sonoma County at the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center (OAEC, a center Wolpert co-founded). Over the last 5 years Wolpert has completed his 70 painting “pond series” which involved a year of observing and repeatedly painting one tree and produced 14 large paintings in his “Great Oak” series. Wolpert has taught and exhibited widely throughout California including the Museum of Sonoma County and the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art.

Reiko Goto Goto will speak about work in the Collins + Goto Studio, Glasgow Scotland. Her artwork has involved empathic relationships with living things and the environment for thirty years. From 1993-2006 she was working on riparian forests with a botanist as part of an effort to bring post-industrial landscape into a dialogue about future forms of public space. Outcomes included Nine Mile Run (1996-2000) and 3 Rivers 2nd Nature (2000-2006). Moving to the UK, she developed a PhD using art, theory and technology to explore empathic interrelationship with specific trees. The first phase of Plein Air: Breath of a Tree, a sound instrument embedded in a wooden painting easel allows one to see/hear photosynthesis and transpiration using real-time leaf respiration data.