bark blankets
made from recycled clothes (human bark if you will), home-made acorn husk dye. machine sewn. a material, emotional and biological study. 2024.

inspired by and made for this tree, through all seasons. more on the tree below the pictures.

 
process

about this tree

       -- One of the first things I wrote about my tree (Heptacodium miconioidies), we’ll call her Komal, was how old she looked. “This tree looks like a grandmother.” I sat down by her stump and looked up at her in the dirt and yesterday, I looked up at her in the snow. In the days that have passed since the snow settled on the dirt, Komal seems to have gotten more youthful, contrary to her original nickname “grandmother”. Covered in wrinkles and freckles, her skin flakes off at the slightest touch. Her skin is shades of beige, white, yellowish-orange-brown and green at the joints where her branches diverge and twist with lovely nooks for moisture to collect, allowing a fuzzy film of moss to grow. I’ve tried contorting my body the way she does and all I could conclude was that Komal had a good reason for twisting upwards in the way she had chosen.

       To understand Komal, understanding her environment is paramount. She’s sandwiched between a staircase, a wall and a lamppost, all in the shade of Tim, the massive tree on the other side of said staircase. Tim is a very large hard-skinned tree (that I haven’t identified yet). With branches that almost cover Komal, it’s a wonder how she manages to get sunlight in the summer. Endemic to China, I wonder how different it must be for her behind a parking lot in New England. Perhaps she has leaves that are big and dark enough that emerge from opposite-facing buds to capture all the light she needs. On top of that, wrapping her branches elegantly around the lamppost and staircase allows her to reach far and wide, beyond Tim’s shade. Not to mention the squirrels who jump and prance around Komal, chirruping and sneezing, using her twisting branches like a little staircase. Komal also has a few siblings who look just like her; they seem about the same height and build and flank her on either side. Since they are all situated on a slight incline, they have asymmetrical stumps that are heavier on the lower end of the incline, ensuring they don’t tip over. Underneath her peeling skin, you’d expect a brittle interior but instead lies a bright light green cork layer that completely changes Komal’s demeanour from frail to energetic. Light filtering through all those peeling layers revives her in her dormancy, keeping her alive and breathing.

       Her English name is “seven-sons tree”, an ode to her seven-petalled flowers in spring which is ironic given that the flowers have six petals. Komal means “soft” in Hindi. Komal has taught me that despite having bumps and bruises, you can still be nurturing; a playground for the fauna. Komal has some odd twists in her branches and she has a few splintered ends but she lays strips of bark over them. She yields but stands her ground. --