ART in the Garden, Reeves-Reed Arboretum’s eagerly anticipated annual garden party and fundraiser, is also the start of a four-month long art exhibition and installation at the Wisner House Gallery and on the Arboretum grounds entitled wood wide web: trees as tonic, mixed-media work by renowned artist, Susan Stair, and featuring nature-themed photographs and installation sculptures by eleven additional artists.
Trees are the foundation of forests, yet there’s so much more than what simply meets the eye when walking in the woods (or the Arboretum). There is an underground world, a world of infinite biological pathways that connect trees and allows them to communicate and behave as a single organism. Forests are therefore a complex social community and trees, “conversing” in a language of carbon and nitrogen, send information, such as defense signals, to one another. wood wide web: trees as tonic, explores a bit of this massive underground communication network, and artist Stair uses clay impressions of tree bark, which can be read as Braille, to reveal the story of race, age, damage, and survival of her tree portraits. Stair has worked extensively in the U.S. and Asia exploring the landscape, using textile, mixed-media collage, clay, and mosaics in the creation of her work.
wood wide web: trees as tonic will also showcase nature-themed photographs and installation sculptures from eleven featured installation artists from as nearby as Summit to as far away as France and England, whose works will be sited in the Wisner House Gallery and on the grounds of the Arboretum. Those artists include Denis Folz, Joe Freeman Jr., Sunil Garg, Peter Hoffer, Tom Holmes, Insun Kim, Rodrigo Guzman S., Eric Schultz, Jim Smith, Charlie Waite, and Sue Zwick. All works are for sale and the participating artists will donate 30% of each purchase to the Arboretum.
wood wide web: trees as tonic opens with the Arboretum’s annual fundraiser and gala, ART in the Garden, on Saturday, June 10. There will be a special meet-the-artists reception on Wednesday, June 28, from 6 – 8 pm. The exhibition continues through October 29th.
For additional information on ART in the Garden, wood wide web: trees as tonic, or other events and activities at Reeves-Reed Arboretum, log on to www.reeves-reedarboretum.org
Celebrating over 40 years as an historic public garden, education resource, and non-profit conservancy, Reeves-Reed Arboretum engages, educates and enriches the public through horticulture and environmental education, and the care and utilization of the gardens and estate. Open 7 days a week from dawn till dusk, the Arboretum is listed on both the National and New Jersey State Historic Registers. Funding for RRA has been made possible in part by the NJ Historical Commission, a division of the Department of State, through a grant administered by the Union County Office of Cultural & Heritage Affairs, Dept. of Parks & Community Renewal.
(above) wood wide web: trees as tonic Mixed-media works by artist Susan Stair featured at ART in the Garden 2017, Reeves-Reed Arboretum, 165 Hobart Avenue, Summit, NJ.
