Returning the favor: Re-robing the trees

These sculptures are part of an ongoing dialogue with natural and human-made materials.  I am looking with new eyes at storm-toppled trees; trees that have succumbed to Emerald Ash Borers, trees that have housed Red-bellied woodpecker nests and winter acorn stashes for squirrels. I robe the limbs with my patterns and combine my designs with the textures, swirls and rings already on the tree limbs so that the original integrity and history of the tree is not lost. I reassemble broken parts into new beings, turning them into witnesses, sentinels and totems.  While these pieces are not portraits of trees in the strictest sense of the word, they are stand-ins, they are trees with new lives, rebuilt trees in new finery.