Black Walnut Trees (Studies) Exhibition + Future Project

What can the seemingly mundane teach us? Last year I began studying the black walnut trees in my neighborhood in order to deepen my relationships with the more-than-human world around me. I started with the goal of making a chromatogram a month to chart the trees’ lifecycle. And then realized that that was more for me, so I could have a neat little project I could wrap in a bow and show off. It wasn’t about actually being in relation with the trees.

There were easy things I could do for them, such as pick up trash and greet them like a friend when I walked past. But when it came to my art practice, I shifted to only occasionally making chromatograms with the trees. Instead of one a month, I would wait until something significant would happen that I felt was worthy of commemorating. For example, when a new branch would begin to bud along the middle of the trunks. Being city trees, they’re forced to have branchless trunks with taller canopies. Any new growth that’s too far down a trunk gets cut off. So I pruned a budding branch before it could be cut off and used it to make a chromatogram that was as long as that branch may have wanted to grow if it didn’t have to contend with human standards of tidiness.

I’m proud to say that my work with the black walnut trees at the corner of Rosemont and Broadway has led to my inclusion in the Roman Susan Navigations program. Unfortunately, the building Roman Susan has called home for years has been sold to Loyola. To celebrate their final months in their original space, they have been holding one week pop up exhibitions. My pop up, Black Walnut Trees (Studies), ran from July 15-20. I hosted a community dye pot, which felt like a mini block party as we took over the sidewalk while folks chatted, shared free food (thank you Rogers Park Food Not Bombs for bringing the bread!), dyed some thrifted napkins and t-shirts, talked about art, and laughed.

Much of my work with artistic chromatograms visually references textile dyeing. This is more unintentional than not since my background is in fibers. Chromatography is very much not synthetic or natural dyeing, but they do share some common talking points. Hosting a dye pot provided a rare opportunity to talk about that, especially in how I use traditional Chinese wet mounting as a sort of bridge between the disciplines (Chinese wet mounting uses alum, which is a successful preservation technique since I suspect it acts like a mordant for prints just like it does for natural dyeing).

My main reason for taking Roman Susan up on the offer of a pop up exhibition was to use this show to kick off my next project. I am still living in relation with the black walnut trees that were the focus of this exhibition, but without a goal of producing art. Instead, I will be using the exhausted dye pots these trees gifted us to make ink that I will use in my next book project.

People often ask me if I’ve made chromatograms outside of my neighborhood. The answer is largely no because I do not want to go to a neighborhood where I have no history, no ties, no relationships, and take some of their soil and plants just so that I personally can make some art. That would just be perpetuating colonization through my creative practice. A large part of why I do this work with soil chromatography is because of relationships. It started with my relationship to my heritage and ancestral lands. It branched out to the easily discounted land I inhabit every day with my black walnut tree studies. And now I will be focusing on other people’s relationships with this land we share.

My next project, “This Land is Alive”, is about overlooked places, people, and plants. Chicagoans take me to places they have important connections to, places that emotionally resonate with them. There, I photograph the location, interview them about it, and help them take a soil or botanical sample. I do this separately a few times in one day with different people. That evening, we meet up as a small group, and I teach them how to make scientific and artistic chromatograms. I want to treat the relationships and memories forged by everyday people on everyday land with reverence. Because the people, places, and plants we overlook every day are beautiful and sacred. In order to survive climate catastrophe, we must live in community with our neighbors, both human and plant alike. In order to “save the planet” we must first save our humanity, which includes the relationships and respect we should have for this land we inhabit.

Featured photo by Nathan Abhalter Smith. Dye pot photos by Quincy Bradford.