2021 Commissioned piece
36x48" framed textile
Did you know our own Niagara Escarpment is home to the oldest recorded trees in Canada? This crucial information was obtained by daring acts of courage, to collect core samples from white cedars perched at the edge of the escarpment face.
These ancient cedars, many being more than 800 years old, are living journals, recording within their yearly inner rings various natural events that occurred within their impressive lifetimes. In this piece, the rings can be seen as scriptures etched on the escarpment face.
"When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured. (...)the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, and high on the mountains and in continuing danger the most indestructible, the strongest, the ideal trees grow."
― Hermann Hesse, Bäume. Betrachtungen und Gedichte
