Tree Talk: Artists Speak For Trees
Thursday, January 28
10am PT, 11am MT, 12pm CT, 1pm ET
EUROPE: Scotland/Ireland/England: 18:00 GMT, Belgium/Germany/Spain: 19:00 UTC
Dana Fritz, Laurie Lambrecht, Stuart Rome, Louise Russell
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 share their artworks and ideas about these most essential and extraordinary living beings. Additionally, guest speakers including scientists, writers and activists are invited to present their work and contribute to the dialogue.
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
Members and one guest are free. General Public can attend for a $10. Capacity is 100 participants. All participants MUST REGISTER.
Member Presenters:
Dana Fritz will share her work in progress from the Nebraska National Forest, entitled Field Guide to a Hybrid Landscape. The largest hand-planted forest in the western hemisphere began as an ambitious late 19th century idea to create a timber industry, reclaim a “disordered” landscape, and change the semi-arid local climate of the Sandhills. The management plan now focuses on grassland restoration and native reforestation that mitigate large-scale climate change.
Dana Fritz is Hixson-Lied Professor of Art and Center for Great Plains Studies Fellow at University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her work in photography examining how we shape and represent the natural world has been exhibited and collected widely. She has been awarded artist residencies at Biosphere 2, PLAYA, Villa Montalvo, Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts, and others. University of New Mexico Press published her monograph, Terraria Gigantica: The World under Glass, in 2017. danafritz.com
Image: ©Dana Fritz, Forest Edge, 2019, archival pigment print, 16 x 40 inches
Laurie Lambrecht will present current work combining photography and textile arts that is a response to her observations of nature. In her ongoing series, Bark/Cloth by employing embroidery with her imagery she connects the visual with the tactile as she seeks to share a felt intimacy with trees. Her recent site-specific outdoor installation Limn to Limb provided prompts for the viewer to rediscover and exalt in details of nature that are often overlooked.
Laurie Lambrecht, a native resident of Bridgehampton, NY studied at Marymount College, the University of Colorado and the Visual Studies Workshop. Her work is in the collections of The National Gallery of Art, the Portland Museum of Art and the Center of Creative Photography. Artist residences she has attended include the Rauschenberg Residency, the Watermill Center, and the Vermont Studio Center. Over the past two decades her work has celebrated trees, their form, subtleties and enduring presence. laurielambrecht.com
Image: ©Laurie Lambrecht, Bark/Cloth: BLUE (from The Abyss of Uncertainty exhibition installation), 2020, Assemblage of cyanotype on linen, archival pigment print on rag paper and hand embroidered archival pigment on linen, sizes varied
Stuart Rome will be speaking about his decade long project photographing from with-inside Redwoods and Sequoia Trees in the remnants of old growth forests. To the tribal group that have been their caretakers, these hollow core trees are considered sacred space; they can be secret passageways to an underworld, places in which to make contact with the powers and forces which will eventually make their way into the world of light.
Stuart Rome’s first solo exhibition of color photographs, entitled Modern Mythologies were presented at the International Museum of Photography in 1978 and he has been exhibited extensively in galleries and museums since. He is a recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship (2015) for his “Oculus" photographs from within giant redwoods and sequoias. Amongst his publications are Maya, Treasures of an Ancient Civilization (Abrams, 1985); Forest, a monograph (Nazraeli Press, 2005); Signs and Wonders (The Southeast Museum of Photography, 2011). stuartrome.com
Image: ©Stuart Rome, Prairie Creek, CA (H15-5), 2015/2020, silver gelatin print, 19 x 19 and 36 x 36 inches
Louise Russell has been walking a family property in the high desert backcountry of San Diego since childhood. Much of her photography is of this place. She attempts to capture that she is part of nature in her series Oak Air and Ways of Knowing where she is combining writing and botanical specimens with her photographs. She is interested in how multiple mediums may attract a wider audience to think about their relationship with nature and how they choose to live.
Louise Russell’s photography centers on land and place, its power and beauty and use and abuse. Her love of nature and concern for our ecological collapse drives her to photograph as a call to connect and a record for the future. Her work has been featured online at Lenscratch, at Open Show San Diego, and exhibited at Soho Photo Gallery, Size Matters Medium Festival, and PhotoPlace amongst others. She’s a member of Snow Creek Collective. louiserussellphoto.com
Image: ©Louise Russell, ‘esnyaaw Coastal Live Oak Quercus agrifolia (Sanctuary), 2020, archival pigment print, 12 x 18 inches
