I have the joy of living between two national parks in California. Several thousand year old Sequoia Groves are a short drive from my home, practically in my backyard! My artwork uniquely captures aspects of the environment I am surrounded by. I have loved trees since I was a kid and never tire of their majestic beauty. My primary medium as an artist is the tree ring growth pattern of fallen trees, captured using ink on paper. The result is a beautifully unique imprint, much like a fingerprint, of the trees growth rings. Each imprint is hand pressed by me and no machines are used. This method was pioneered and mastered by the late Bryan Nash Gill. All wood I use is already downed, I never take a living tree for my purposes. Much of the wood for my prints has come about as a result of drought and bark beetle infestation in the past years in the Sierra Nevada mountain range, which have caused thousands of trees to die.
I hope to be able to build on the history of past generations by documenting tree rings in the Sequoia region. Dendrochronologists like Dr. Ellsworth Huntington of Yale and the National Park Service published their work of giant Sequoia tree rings following the great ecological disaster of the logging of the giant Sequoias in the Converse Basin region around 1911. Tree rings visible on a stump at the time of Christ were measured and documented which showed growth patterns and climate change of millennia. While my artwork is intended more for beauty than for research, I believe it’s important work. In a small way these prints preserve the visual history of the tree at the time it was cut or fallen, which could also help future generations learn about what was happening at the current moment in time perhaps informing our views on climate change.
Taking something fallen and turning it into something beautiful is a meaningful process for me. Beauty can be born amidst the ruins of something else as I have experienced deeply in my personal life. The beauty of a tree in the forest is obvious while the tree is growing and full of life, but once it dies and falls we don’t necessarily view it the same way. The beauty is still there, but we have to look at it from a different perspective to see it.
In addition to tree prints I also enjoy other forms of relief printmaking, focused mostly on linoleum relief printing. Look for new, original linocut prints
I hope to be able to build on the history of past generations by documenting tree rings in the Sequoia region. Dendrochronologists like Dr. Ellsworth Huntington of Yale and the National Park Service published their work of giant Sequoia tree rings following the great ecological disaster of the logging of the giant Sequoias in the Converse Basin region around 1911. Tree rings visible on a stump at the time of Christ were measured and documented which showed growth patterns and climate change of millennia. While my artwork is intended more for beauty than for research, I believe it’s important work. In a small way these prints preserve the visual history of the tree at the time it was cut or fallen, which could also help future generations learn about what was happening at the current moment in time perhaps informing our views on climate change.
Taking something fallen and turning it into something beautiful is a meaningful process for me. Beauty can be born amidst the ruins of something else as I have experienced deeply in my personal life. The beauty of a tree in the forest is obvious while the tree is growing and full of life, but once it dies and falls we don’t necessarily view it the same way. The beauty is still there, but we have to look at it from a different perspective to see it.
In addition to tree prints I also enjoy other forms of relief printmaking, focused mostly on linoleum relief printing. Look for new, original linocut prints