Arborshaping

In the forested Delaney Conservation Area behind the farm, I saw a white pine growing with what looked like a large clenched fist halfway up the trunk. When I looked more closely I saw that it was a twisted knot. Then I saw other pines growing with similarly knotted trunks. Intrigued and baffled, I wondered what had happened in these woods.

Further along the trail, a young sapling’s central leader was not growing straight, but circled around itself. That was the aha moment. Someone was going around and looping the tops of these young pines. Then, as the tree grew, the loose loop tightened into a knot. I noticed a few young trees missing the top of their trunks, their central leaders. Unable to submit to the pressure of this forced bending, they had sadly snapped off. I continued along the trail, unraveling any looped tree I found. Later I learned that one of my neighbors had knotted the trees when he was a young child; and he continues to do it haphazardly even now.

In the 16th century painting The Lament of Nature to the Wandering Alchemist by the French artist, Jean Perréal, a scantily clad angel with arms crossed below her breasts sits in a regal seat, which when you look closely, is really a tree with a trellised back of sinuous trunks. Why the naked angel, the well-dressed alchemist, the fire under her seat? The angel appears to be either defending herself or rebuking the alchemist. However, what interests me most is her chair. The upright branches have been twisted to grow and touch; they have grafted themselves to each other creating this fantastical throne chair. I wondered if this was the wildly imaginative idea of the painter or whether he had seen such a tree chair. 

If you had been driving along the California coast near Santa Cruz in the 1940’s you could have seen even more fantastical tree creations. Axel Erlandson, a farmer, created what he called a Tree Circus — eccentric, fanciful, and bizarre shapes created by training trees to grow in particular shapes. One of his trees has a heart right in the center of the main trunk. Another had two trunks that spiral around each other as they both support the large tree canopy. His ‘Basket’ tree is made from several trees planted in a circle, then he grafted overlapping limbs together to form a basket weave pattern.

Image from Wikipedia article on Axel Erlandson.

Today, a tree shaper in Oregon, Richard Reames, calls his work arbor sculpture. He makes living trees into furniture. Chairs, he says, are relatively easy to grow, but he has also created arbors, a spiral staircase, and even a boat. In Germany, Konstantin Kirsch and Herman Block have created several living tree houses. For one house, they planted 1,300 ash saplings, seven every foot, and wove them together to make the walls to form an interior court surrounded by six rooms.  

Arborshaping is grafting carried to its limits; we humans do seem to be wired to go to extremes. When I look at these images of arborshaping, I have simultaneous reactions of awe and horror. There is something ghastly about forcing nature to grow in such unnatural ways, and yet the growth patterns are astonishing. I do, however, love the idea of incorporating a living tree into the building of a house. One of my favorite examples is from Homer’s Odyssey. (Though I can’t quite tell if the tree continued to live.) 

There was the bole of an olive tree with long leaves growing strongly in the courtyard, and it was thick, like a column. I laid down my chamber around this … Then I cut away the foliage of the long-leaved olive, and trimmed the trunk from the roots up, planning it with a brazen adze, well and expertly, and trued it straight to a chalkline, making a bedpost of it, and bored all hones with an auger. (23.190-288).

When Odysseus returned home in the guise of a beggar after ten years of wandering, Penelope tested him by saying she had moved their bed. From Odysseus’ reaction of indignation, she was certain that she was speaking to her husband.

And that angel representing Nature? I think she is saying, “I don’t need your alchemy, your thick red robes, your ivory tower of mysterious pursuits. Look what magic I can do on my own. Nature has plenty of mystery, just embrace her!  

Joseph Wheelwright: Sculptor of Stones and Trees

A few days ago my partner Blase and I went to visit the artist, Joseph Wheelwright, to choose some work for the fall outdoor sculpture exhibit. Entering a high-ceilinged warehouse space in Dorchester, I immediately felt the presence of stone – stone dust, stone chunks, and many finished stone heads — decades of carved work on the floor, and on tables and carts. Machines and air compressors to run the stone-carving power tools crammed one area, a large work table occupied the central space, and in the back were stairs to a small office and gallery.

Photo from Joseph Wheelwright Website.

I saw a few of Joe’s tree figures, ones he constructed out of bifurcated tree trunks turned upside down, the trees found in the woods near his summer studio in Vermont. Before cutting down a tree, Wheelwright first checks the root area to make sure it would provide a good set of “shoulders.” A few years ago, an assembly of his giant tree creatures strode across the landscape at Fruitlands Museum in Harvard.

“Choose,” he said, gesturing to the entire studio. “Anything you want.” 

“Wow!” I thought. It’s interesting to have the freedom to choose. Just how does one begin to make a choice when there is such richness? Some of the stone heads must have weighed a few thousand pounds — far too big for us to move in Blase’s pickup truck. Some older pieces made with bones and other fragile material would not be fitting for an outdoor exhibit. One recent sculpture was a small figure standing on a tall rectangular stone. It reminded me of the small figures I cast into bronze and place on rocks or inside wood sections. I recognized that attraction to what I know and feel comfortable with, and turned away to take in the range of really different work. There were so many stone faces, each with a unique expression – it was difficult to decide on one.

Joe asked if we wanted to go upstairs. “Of course, yes, let’s see everything,” I answered. There, in the middle of a small gallery, my eyes alighted on a tower of branch figures. I was familiar with Joe’s wonderful small bronze figures created from delicate tree branches, most of them less than a foot high. They are immediately likable, posed so energetically in sprightly postures. But this sculpture was a three-dimensional ladder, a tower of figure after figure welded together at the point where a leg rests on a knee or a foot on an arm – all interdependent and interconnected. Like a circus act where the performers create a human pyramid with the stronger ensemble members on the bottom, the bronze figures at the base of the sculpture had thicker branches. Then these branch personages became progressively thinner as together they supported the smallest figure, atop them all.

“How about this one?” I asked.

“Well it’s a little fragile to transport,” he said, then paused. “It has one side, I think it’s this one,” he said, pointing, “where you can lay it down.”

“Has it been outside?” Blase asked.

Joe didn’t answer. I’m not sure if he remembered.

I was riveted by this sculpture and did not want to move on. “Could we have it?” My enthusiasm gave me the audacity to ask. 

“Blase, I think you and I can carry it down the stairs,” Joe responded.

As they carried it out to the truck, his wife, Susan, said, “That’s one of my favorites.”

Joseph Wheelwright's Tower of Figures (partial view with visiting dragonfly)

All these figures mutually support each other. If one moves, many will tumble. It’s a sublime balancing act. I look at Joe’s sculpture and think how we are all in this world supporting each other and connected, though not in such a physically obvious way.  

Once we loaded the sculpture into the truck on a thick blanket and tied it in so it wouldn’t roll, Joe asked if we wanted some stones. Blase chose one with a small bird perched on its head; I selected one that seemed to be peering around a corner.

Joe was so generous — the pieces will be for sale — but he declined to give me prices. I think he knew the price tag would be shocking. There’s a lot more work than meets the eye in all of Joe’s work. He has a long lifetime of dedication to his art. We’re so honored to have his sculpture at the farm this fall. Opening Day will be Saturday, September 3rd and the exhibit will be open through Columbus Day.

Asian Pears

Last week I mixed up a yogurt container full of powdered clay, ground carbonatite (volcanic soil that is rich in minerals), and aloe vera juice. I wanted to make a poultice for a three-year-old Asian pear tree with a nasty crack along its trunk.

Nashi is the Japanese word for Asian pears. I first ate Nashi when I lived in Japan in the early 80’s and was studying the Noh Theater. Round and with a sharp crunch like an apple, they have the light color and texture of a pear. What is most remarkable about this fruit is the amount of sweet juice that you get with every bite. Most Asian pears you buy in the grocery store are overripe and the taste has already started to sour. But taste them fresh, and they sparkle.

I knew once I started to grow apples that I wanted to also grow Asian pears. We planted the first twelve trees in the orchard among the apple trees. Their fourth year, I watched them flower and then waited anxiously for the fruit. Lovely golf ball-size Asian pears dangled from the branches.

Then early one July morning, when I was walking out to the meditation hut behind the orchard, I saw only the swaying stems. I felt like my mind was deceiving me. What happened to the pears? There was not one fruit left on any of the trees. The deer had been thorough!

The following spring, I moved these trees to an area near the house with the hopes that they would be protected by proximity to the household’s activity. The trees grew and produced fruit, and the deer left them alone. We had five years of bountiful harvests and decided to grow more of these delicious fruits. I knew deer protection would be mandatory.

We put a fence around the old potato field across from the orchard and planted 32 trees — 8 different varieties on a diagonal grid in order of ripening date. Here, we don’t mow, and I plant every kind of native wildflower I find growing on the farm or that friends offer.

In high summer when I check on the trees I wend my way through 5 foot tall (and I’m only 5’ 2”) purple asters, red and purple bee balm, feverfew, mugwort, mint, comfrey—a dense abundance of texture and color. It’s here that I also planted the goumi, aronia, and goji berries. And there’s a blueberry bush with fruit hidden from the birds, which I am tending for a friend who moved and didn’t want to lose his plant. I love seeing the diversity and discovering what grows well together and what doesn’t.

July 16, 2016 - Red and Purple Monarda Bee Balm with Asian Pear Tree (right).

I’m most interested in seeing if growing the pears in a natural environment will help them be healthier and have fewer pest issues. Some people say that the trees will be stunted because of the competition from other plants, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Maybe the competition actually means that the trees have to grow strong roots to compete with the other plants for nutrients and water—or maybe they all live together – supporting each other like trees and plants in a forest.

I love being inside this fertile environment. It’s not completely wild; it still needs care and attention. I pull the wild plants that I don’t want, the ones that could take over. Last spring, we had a sudden flush of velvetleaf, a weed that can be toxic to some plants by inhibiting their water uptake. I simply pulled all of it, and it hasn’t come back, though its seeds can incubate in the ground for decades. Vetch also wends its way through among the pears. Vetch is a nitrogen fixer, but it is invasive and cloying and will take over—so vetch also gets pulled and removed. It’s selective chaos, but the beauty is that there is no right or wrong, no hard and fast rules.

But even a Garden of Eden has problems. The tree that I poulticed a week ago has not improved; in fact, it has worsened. Its leaves are drying up. And the few other pear trees that I noticed had smaller, but similar cracks also have some drying leaves. I am concerned that it is fire blight, a bacterial disease that can rapidly travel from tree to tree. But usually fire blight shows up first in a few branches. I’ve had some in the orchard and can usually prune out those branches. But this is in the middle of the main trunk. I have spent hours reading and researching and still don’t know for sure. 

Each day I walk by, and it is getting worse. I can’t bear the thought of losing this tree. I’ve lost so many trees over the years, and I feel like I've been too lax. I’ve accepted their deaths knowing I would transplant another. But I no longer feel that way. I’ve become more aware of the preciousness of each one, and my older, more casual attitude is shifting. It’s not that I want to be melodramatic – but I want to do all that I can to save this tree.

Research is getting me nowhere, so I am going to stop further reading and go out there and use every iota of intuition I have to see if there is anything else I can do to help this tree. To begin with I scratched away the weeds that were very close to its trunk, dug away some of the soil and replaced it with more carbonatite. I carried it a 5-gallon bucket of water to the tree and gave it a juicy drink. I know this hot weather isn’t helping any of our perennial plants flourish.

I remembered a spiritual teacher’s suggestion. “Intention equals outcome,” he said. “Keep these words plastered over your eyes.”  I fully recognize the challenge of really staying with my intention — not drifting off, becoming distracted, or somehow rationalizing that this one pear tree’s life isn’t that important.

I also see how I create boundaries of what I think I can and cannot do.  What if we each really committed to helping the person or creature we happened to meet next?  I think we would change our world. Perhaps we are actually afraid of our true power. In response to last week's blog on creativity, a friend wrote, “We shrink from our own magnificence . . . .” When I read, magnificence, I felt a tremor through my body. “No, not me.” But maybe that’s the catch — we have to own our power and be humble. Despite my efforts the pear tree might not survive. But given the recent tragedies in the world, we have to gather every particle of our magnificence to counter with good.

Gold Leaf, Grief, and the Creative Process

There is a tree section in my studio that has been leaning against a post for several years. I removed the bark and sanded the wood, but have not been able to transform it into a sculpture. At the bottom of the trunk is a large inset oval. It is the sign of an old wound indicating that the tree suffered an accident. Or it could have been the site of the removal of a large limb. I will never know, since I can’t go back in time to when this tree was alive growing by the side of the road or on the edge of the woods.

Perhaps this tree’s wound is similar to my own. There are times when grief covers me like a sealskin and I don’t know how to remove it. I may think I know the cause, but more often, I have only assigned a reason. There are so many experiences that layer themselves in memory, and then a new experience, like a magnet, attracts indiscriminately so many others. Who can know where one begins and another ends? These are the times I find it hard to motivate myself to go into my studio.

In the studio there are no distractions, no comfortable chair or sofa, no bookshelves, just work tables with all sorts of projects in various stages, materials, and tools. But if I get myself down there and tentatively start working, not knowing where I am going or what I am doing, the grief and the inertia disappear. Where did it go? Did something take its place? We can be so affected by our emotions, and yet they are so changeable — not solid objects.

For some time I have wanted to gold leaf that wounded area on the tree trunk. “Why?” I would ask myself and didn’t have a good answer. Then last week, I decided I would just do it. I bought some wood filler to fill the small insect holes, sanded it down, and painted the surface a light yellow so any imperfections in the gold leafing would not be dark, but yellow. Then I sealed the surface with varnish, and after it had set, applied the gold.

Gold leaf is mysterious. The foil is only .12 microns thick. (One sheet of printer paper equals 1000 microns.) After applying the sizing, the glue, and letting it dry enough to become a tacky surface, I carefully float the leaf over it. The size and leaf unite and become a strong, solid surface. Afterwards, a light burnishing with a cotton ball, and the gold leaf is there for the foreseeable future. It’s the same technique a steeplejack uses to gold leaf a dome on a church or palace.

The joy I feel when working on a sculpture transcends all other emotions. Concentration floods my mind, and there is no room for anything else except for the step-by-step activity of the process of creating. I am baffled that I resist doing this work that I love--this work that transforms old wounds into art.