Trees; their liveliness, and the uses different species put them to when dead
In “Thinking like a mountain”, Aldo Leopold wrote: Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of a wolf. I start by trying to think like a tree. Paper pulp, bits of spruce, an old tree guard. In a woodland management leaflet (from Fountains Forestry) a photograph shows lines of plastic tubes beckoning to the future.
Snags in snow, clear-felled forest: a photograph painted over to allow a focus on deadwood, and its generative possibilities.
In Glasgow, Tacita Dean exhibits her version of painted over photos (only the trees retain their form – perhaps the point is within the gelatin surface). Camouflage manuals, Disruptive Pattern Materials, where figure and ground merge.
A conversation with an entomologist: forest ecology is complex, how much do you want to know? Insects are involved at each and every stage, as living wood turns into soil. The way invertebrates and fungi move in differs whether the wood is standing or on the ground.
Papier mache: chewed paper, or mashed, with oil of cloves as an insect deterrent. A modelling material, in which I implant a small, spruce, snag.
From last summer, photographs of an emerging woodwasp. A sawfly, who can wait till the moment is right. Who prefers live or green spruce.
sheep and trees held apart, cast as incompatible
trees as shelter, human and non-human
deadwood, ‘snags’, woody debris
snow modelling lines
zones of clear-fell, replanting, first growth – delineated from pasture
broadleaves in a valley – snow was so early this year, their leaves blew over the first fall
blocks, ranks
tree-lines – a malleable idea for further investigation:
… land-use … climatic transition … life-lines and shelter … diagrammatic rendering (productivity, biomass, carbon sequestration) … pattern and repetition … supply lines … cultural entanglements …
drawing in the field 