Tree Talk: Artists Speak For Trees
Thursday, June 24
3pm PT, 4pm MT, 5pm CT, 6pm ET
Australia 8am AEST, Friday, June 25
Melinda Hurst Frye, Tony Bellaver, Narelle Carter-Quinlan, Pamela Pauline
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.
Presenters:
Melinda Hurst Frye centers her practice on themes of ecology and place in photographs of the churning Pacific Northwest landscape floor, the land of the Coast Salish people. She approaches the forest as an amateur ecologist; observing, sketching, noting, photographing specimens, and scanning the scene with a flatbed scanner. Analogous to scenes from a natural history museum, flora and fauna take center stage to illustrate that we are always tied to migration, evolution and metamorphosis. Hurst Frye holds an MFA from Savannah College of Art and Design, a BFA from Pacific Northwest College of Art, and is represented by J. Rinehart Gallery in Seattle. Frye is based in Washington State. mhurstfrye.com
Image: Ghost Pipes, Hoh Rainforest, 2019, photograph, 30 x 40 inches
Tony Bellaver addresses themes of human activity being the dominant influence on climate and the environment. His recent work is a deliberate critique on the extraction industry of forest clear cutting in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S. Titled "Resource Extraction," Bellaver uses a classic photographic approach to create images with the desire to share what he directly witness’. His multi-image mixed media books and sculptures examine and confront the anthropocentric practice of forest clear cutting. For his diary-like works, he uses hand-cut words to create a negative space in photographs along with maps, drawings and found foliage. Bellaver attended the San Francisco Art Institute for graduate school and has exhibit internationally. He spends a good amount of his time guiding back country trips for the Sierra Club. Bellaver is based in Oakland, California. tonybellaver.com
Image: Endo-biotic Symbiosis, 2013, mixed media book object,11.5 x 24 x 7 inches
Narelle Carter-Quinlan creates work that's an embodied ecology of Place. An anatomist and histologist, she experiences her body as part of the living fabric of Country. Beloved of one another, we are a Songline of intimacy, tissues of earth and ecosystems of the inner body in communion. An Australian, Narelle grew up by the sandstone cliffs of Coogee Beach. Her father, a surf lifesaver, initiated her into the practice of listening to Country - Dadirri. The felt known poetic places of lichen-nerve tracery, mangrove estuaried lymphatic systems, unfurling rainforests of our own lace lungs, ligamentous flow of fig roots, our internal waterways, phloem and xylem of interior creeks, rivers and ponds. We listen each other into form, sanctification, and benediction of reverence. The fascial net of paperback forests whose skin and bark interweaves. Tenderness. This work speaks a language without sound, direct transmission of knowing: tree skin - my skin - Australian skin. embodiedterrain.com
Image: Forests, 2020
Pamela Pauline creates works that are made entirely of flora and fauna that's endemic to Australia and listed as rare, vulnerable, or endangered. By co-opting photographs of live collections of Australia's imperiled plants and endangered birds into contemporary artworks, the viewer is asked to contemplate the deeper message around biodiversity loss rather than escape from it. Using skills garnered from two decades as a professional portrait, landscape and fine art photographer, her compositions are often deeply layered, highly emotive and exquisitely detailed. While some of Pauline’s work is decorative, much of it holds a deeper message around the importance of celebrating, documenting, and preserving Australian biodiversity. Pauline is based in Sydney, Australia. pamelapauline.com
Image: Biophilia Bouquet, 2021, photographic collage, 100 cm x 80 cm.
