It was a terrific opening! Lots of good friends and even a couple of sales. Below is the artist’s statement for the show.

Madrone

Along Puget Sound’s shores Madrone trees cling to rocky cliffs. The trees’ rough bark splits and peels away to reveal layers of brilliant orange contrasting with smooth green inner bark. Textile-like shreds surround the bases of these evergreen trees, with their muscular trunks and curving limbs. Shaped by wind and weather, the trees provide food and habitat for wildlife and their broad root systems stabilize the rocky soil, preventing erosion.

But Madrones are sensitive to environmental stresses. Many are dying in the San Juan Islands from diseases that may be linked to climate change. Deer, whose population is unchecked by natural predators, keep new trees from establishing. The groves are interdependent in ways not completely understood by horticulturalists and, when one tree is removed, the others will slowly fail and die. These trees do not thrive in cultivated landscapes, but only in nature, protected from encroaching development.

This new series of artwork is inspired by the beauty of the Madrones and also by their fragility. Fabric, which is fundamental to my work, provides a metaphor for the trees. The bark of the Madrone peels away from the tree, littering the ground with papery sheets like the scrolls of a vanquished civilization. Fabric is strong, its threads interwoven to create the cloth that swaddles us from birth to death, much like the roots of the Madrones bind the rocky soil together. And yet, cut just one thread and a weak point is created in the whole cloth.

Standing amongst the Madrones on land sacred to the Lummi tribe, I feel the trees’ ancient presence. They are lonely sentinels, emblematic of our region and the struggle for permanence in a changing world.