Requiem

“Trees are the earth’s endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.” Richard Powers The requiem series has been an outgrowth of the erasures series that is ongoing. Sometimes I think of it as portraits of loss. Growing up on vast acres of wooded land I have always thought of trees as living beings. When I returned to my birth state of North Carolina I was immediately aware of the changes to the trees on these beloved mountains. Historically these trees have been threatened and destroyed since they were robbed from the original “keepers of the forest”, but now the threats include environmental changes as insects and trees that were once separated by climate now meet. Using raw cut boards of local trees that have died, from a local sawmill, I began a series of portraits of these trees. The carving process allows printing along the way, thus producing multiple images of the dying of the tree. Not all threatened trees lend themselves to carving, so the boards used are walnut and ash, and the trees portrayed are ash, walnut, hemlock, ancient pines, chestnut among others. Research shows there are trees in North Carolina over 2600 years old. Walnuts can live over 300 years. Eastern pines are thought to have lived for over 400 years. What have they witnessed? Included in this series are also prints from and of the chestnuts in the Cevennes, also being affected. Sabbaticals and the early pandemic months were spent there.