Learning with Trees Artists and Ecologies of Connection
Curator: Martina Tanga
01. Yuko Oda
Tender Might, 2026, Japanese mineral pigment and plastic on paper, 42 x 46 inches, $7800.00
02. Yuko Oda
Cosmos Pollen 2, 2026, Japanese mineral pigment and plastic on paper mounted on glass, 22 x 30 inches, $1800.00
Almost invisible to us, pollen is not just genetic material but microscopic miracles of interspecies communication. Scientist Hope Jahren sees them as deliberate, resilient vessels of survival that nature relies on to bridge unimaginable distances. Oda visualizes these carriers of inchoate life, highlighting their complex, hybrid, and unique essence by combining materials in her work – traditional Japanese mineral pigments with contemporary materials such as plastics, resins, and synthetic surfaces. Interspecies pollination is an ancient collaborative process, and magnolias and beetles share an evolutionary partnership dating back more than 95 million years – predating bees and butterflies.
03. Sarah Slavick
Elegy to the Underground 6, 2023, diptych, oil on canvas, 70 x 65.5 inches, $12,500.00
At best, we may be observers of the bustling marketplace of interspecies collaboration and communication unfolding beneath our feet. Trees and fungi have been chatting for over 450 million years, exchanging nutrients and messages that form what we call the great mycorrhizal network, or what forestry scientist and conservationist Suzanne Simard has called the Wood Wide Web. Using visual frameworks, Sarah Slavick explores systems of connection that sustain ecological life. A recurring theme in her work is interconnectedness. Networks of roots, branches, and organic forms suggest relationships spanning multiple scales, from individual organisms to entire ecosystems. Through these visual structures, Slavick reflects on how living systems depend on cooperation, exchange, and continual adaptation.
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04. Clint Baclawski
Clearcut, 2026, powder-coated steel frame, scrolling lightbox kits, electronic ballasts, Latex prints, LED bulbs, speaker wire, power cords, 77h × 92w × 34d inches, price upon request
Baclawski explores themes of perception, memory, and environmental transformation, emphasizing the instability of our visual experience and our understanding of landscape shifts driven by climate change. Baclawski travels to protected landscapes in America and abroad, capturing snapshots of ecological time. For this installation, the artist was in the Scottish Highlands, home to the ancient, old-growth Caledonian Forest, which has been decimated by centuries of deforestation and overgrazing by deer and sheep. Today, rewilding initiatives and conservation groups are actively restoring these native woodland ecosystems.
05. Diana Arcadipone
Tree Ring, 2025, ve 6/25, monotype, drypoint print, embroidery, beading, 22 x 22 inches, $3200.00
06. Diana Arcadipone
Tree Ring, 2022, ve 1/25, monotype, drypoint print, chine collé, embroidery, beading, 22 x 22 inches, $3200.00
Arcadipone is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice centers on ecological observation, craft traditions, and material relationships with the natural world. Working across printmaking, fiber arts, basketry, and embroidery, she investigates how human and nonhuman systems intertwine over time. Tree rings, for example, become visual metaphors for memory, resilience, and environmental record-keeping. By combining printmaking with handwork,
Arcadipone creates layered compositions that straddle documentation and interpretation, revealing how trees tell us stories of interconnected processes that shape both human and nonhuman worlds.
07. Cristi Rinklin
Thicket, 2025, oil and acrylic on aluminum, 40 x 60 inches, $8000.00
08. Cristi Rinklin
Forever in Suspension, 2026, oil and acrylic on aluminum, 64 x 48 inches, $9000.00
It is easy to slip into Cristi Rinklin’s landscapes – thickly forested ecosystems of New England where trees have carpeted the soil for 15,000 years. Yet less than 1% of the region’s Old Growth has survived colonial clearing. Drawing on analog sketches, digital imagery, memory, and direct encounters with the landscape, Cristi Rinklin constructs environments that feel both familiar and unstable. There has been a devastating loss of life, and habitats now exist only in the unlocatable memory banks of Trees. Landscape functions as both subject and metaphor, and Rinklin’s paintings register this instability of perception and recollection as the surfaces glitch and fade. Singular trees dissolve into both a ghostly forested past and a resilient collective present.
09. Emily Auchincloss
Color Story 1 (Amur and Avocado), 2026, Dye from local Amur cork tree bark, dye from avocado pits, on silk. 7h x 10w inches open, $400.00
10. Emily Auchincloss
Color Story 2 (Reading Rainbow), 2026, Dye from my backyard Japanese maple leaves, cochineal, cochineal modified with vinegar, weld, weld+indigo, and indigo, on silk. 7h x 10w inches open, $400.00
11. Emily Auchincloss
Color Story 3 (Japanese Maple and Time and Iron), 2026, Dye from my backyard Japanese maple leaves from May 1 and May 23, modified with iron, on silk. 7h x 10w inches open, $400.00
Auchincloss is an artist whose practice explores the intersection of ecology, material processes, and botanical knowledge. Through an intimate collaborative process, Auchincloss has allowed sentient plants to write their own brilliantly tinted stories in these books. The artist befriended a Japanese Maple in her back garden, harvesting their leaves at different moments in the year’s cycle to produce varying shades of purple. Joining the chorus of narratives, Auchincloss hand-dyed leaves from other plants, including Indigo, cochineal, and Amur Cork tree bark, producing this vibrant rainbow. Color is the language of these ecological tales, generated through relationships among soil, climate, seasonality, and plant life. They hold stories of space-time as leaves come and go.
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12. Elizabeth James Perry
The Quiet Intellegence of a Forest, 2026, eastern red cedar bark, black walnut bark, back walnut dye, cotton ribbon, glass beads, cardboard, acrylic paint, green agate, 25h x 12w inches, $9000.00
Trees’ practice of reciprocity and relationality aligns with James-Perry’s Indigenous values of connection and stewardship. Working with natural materials such as cedar bark, milkweed fiber, plant dyes, shells, and other regionally significant resources, she creates sculptures and woven forms that foreground longstanding Wampanoag knowledge systems. Importantly, materials are approached not as inert resources but as living relatives with whom humans maintain reciprocal relationships. Harvesting, preparation, and making are ethical acts that require respect, responsibility, and care. Through these processes, James-Perry highlights Indigenous frameworks that emphasize interdependence between human communities and the natural world.
13. Diana Arcadipone
Wild Basket, 2024, handwoven with red osher dogwood and willow, diameter: 18 inches, NFS
14. Jane Marsching
Ash: a score for power, 2026, edition of 2, one A.P. laser-cut tree ink dyed, mulberry paper, 33h x 26w inches, $750.00
15. Jane Marsching
Gingko: a score for hope, 2026, edition of 2, one A.P., laser-cut tree ink dyed, mulberry paper, 33h x 26w inches, $750.00
16. Jane Marsching
Crab Apple: a score for wildness, 2026, edition of 2, one A.P., laser-cut tree ink dyed mulberry paper, 33h x 26w inches, $750.00
For Marsching, each tree has a personality, and each species has distinct emotive attributes. Working with specific trees near HallSpace, Marsching has communed with them to hear their message and has crafted these visual poems. These poems also serve as scores that can be enacted and embodied by those who interpret them, thereby creating a multidimensional communication loop between Trees and us, humans.
Over the past two decades, she has developed a practice that integrates visual art, collaborative research, social engagement, and environmental activism, producing projects that bridge artistic inquiry with scientific and civic knowledge. Through research-driven, participatory projects, she seeks to expand public understanding of environmental issues and foster the imagination needed to envision more sustainable and equitable futures.
17. Alexandra Ionescu
The Tree Told Me To, 2019, photogravure print from a digital, photograph, mounted on aluminum frame, 25 × 37 inches, $5000.00
On a solitary excursion to Mears Island in British Columbia, Ionescu stopped in her tracks upon encountering this Mother Tree, a giant, wise red cedar. This work seeks to capture the dialogue between the artist and the tree, giving form to the temporal and spatial distortions of such an encounter. In Ionescu’s practice, photography serves as both a research method and an artistic medium. She approaches image-making as a form of listening – an opportunity to learn from plants, water, soil, and the countless relationships that constitute ecosystems. Her work foregrounds agency, reciprocity, and interconnectedness.
18. Kendall Reiss
Bark Brooches, 2025, kiln cast glass, silver, bronze, 2 x 1.25 x .75 inches each, $900.00
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19. Kendall Reiss
Objects-for-the-End-of-the-World: Magnolia Pod from Memory; Tracing the Topography of Heartwood, 2026, Carved saucer magnolia wood
collected after the trees central leader was downed during a microburst producing 80-90mph, winds in Bristol, RI, July 3, 2025. 22 x 5 x 5 inches, NFS
20. Kendall Reiss
Objects-for-the-End-of-the-World: Southern Magnolia Seed Savers (pods) & Umbrella Magnolia Seed Keepers (seeds), 2025-26, kiln cast glass (pods), silver (seeds), each pod: 5 x 2 x 2 inches, each seed: .5 x .5 x .25 inches, NFS
21. Kendall Reiss
Objects-for-the-End-of-the-World: Magnoliaceae Grafted, 2026, kiln cast glass, 13 x 14 x .75 inches, $7000.00
22. Kendall Reiss
Radical Field Notes, 2020-26, Notebooks, Raven Log, various natural tree materials, carved wooden objects, watercolor & gouache on paper pods, glass & metal castings, etc., installation: various dimensions , table: 80 x 20 x 35 inches, NFS
Seeds and pods are keepers of the past and messengers to the future. They are time travelers, carrying genetic code that has evolved in trees for over 400 million years and that, quietly dormant, could withstand the next great mass extinction, safeguarding life in whatever form it may take. Kendall Reiss’s practice is grounded in geological deep time, where forms develop beyond our human experience of time. She frequently draws on field observations, collecting practices, and natural specimens as starting points for artistic inquiry. Through jewelry, sculpture, glass, wood carving, and installation, she examines how objects can function as repositories of memory, ecological knowledge, and cultural meaning, blurring the boundaries between scientific specimen, sculpture, and adornment.