TREEHOUSE: A floralscape for compassionate conversations
“Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.” –Arundhati Roy
Inspired by the words of author Arundhati Roy, I curated an art exhibit with Mike Guy, Artemis Herber, Adele Yiseol Kenworthy, Marc Robarge, and Miriam Julianna called TREEHOUSE. When you arrive at the Brentwood Arts Exchange, you will enter through a portal into a relational art installation designed to arouse wonder about the world and our fellow humans. TREEHOUSE invites you to talk to each other and imagine a world in which we all flourish, a world in which we are more connected to one another and to nature. TREEHOUSE invites you to contemplate what actions we can take to make this imagined world real outside the gallery.
We use the metaphor of trees to show our dependence on one another for our survival. Trees are “social creatures” that communicate with each other in cooperative ways that hold lessons for humans. Suzanne Simard, a professor of forest ecology at the University of British Columbia, found that a “Douglas fir that had been injured by insects appeared to send chemical warning signals to a ponderosa pine growing nearby. The pine tree then produced defense enzymes to protect against the insect.” Like the trees, we depend on each other for our survival.
The exhibit will be adorned with flowers, birds, moss, and other flora. However, we do not use beauty to create a kumbaya, tree-hugger environment, rather we present beauty as an entry point for reflection and introspection. “Beauty is the sharpest tool in the box if you want to make people feel something,” says photographer Robert Mosse. Beauty is also medicinal, soothing the stress we have felt over the pandemic years and helping us repair, care for, and strengthen ourselves for a new world.
Please support the TREEHOUSE with a donation!
Many of the materials for the exhibit have been collected from nature or recycled from everyday objects. For example, the seedlings will be grown in soda cans and the origami birds will be made from found paper. Actual stumps will be used for seating in the conversational spaces. To the extent possible, purchased materials will be environmentally friendly.
We received a generous honorarium from the gallery to create this exhibit and have dedicated all of that money to purchasing materials. To raise additional and necessary funds to complete the project, we are asking for donations to support our work.
As a token of our appreciation for donations of $50, we will give you one 8”x11” risograph print that we have created as a collective. The print will be signed by the artists. When you make a donation, you may choose to receive your print in the mail for an additional $8.95 to cover the mailing costs, or you can save the cost of shipping by picking up your print at the opening reception on April 9.
You can donate via:
Venmo: @WeShouldTalk
Paypal: hello@weshouldtalk.today
Please include the shipping cost of $8.95 if you would like the print mailed to you. If you would like to donate in another format, please send an email to hello@weshouldtalk.today.
Thank you for supporting our work!
The TREEHOUSE experience runs from April 4 through June 25 with an opening reception on April 9 from 5 to 8 PM at the Brentwood Arts Exchange located at 3901 Rhode Island Avenue, Brentwood, MD.
