Tree of Life

by: Elizabeth Essner

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

-       Mary Oliver, When I am Among The Trees[i]

In the early 19th century, as industry began to turn grassy swaths of countryside into the grey density of soon-to-be cities, a vital issue arose: how to bury the dead. People had always laid their kin to rest underground, but in these new crowded spaces, urban graveyards were piled high. Land was limited and disease was rampant, so a new answer emerged. Carved out just beyond the city limits, acres of land became burial grounds, imagined with sweeps of trees that looked to pastoral landscapes and English gardens.[ii] In the United States, the first garden cemetery was realized in 1831, the hilly retreat of Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Boston. Laurel Hill in Philadelphia, Green-Wood in Brooklyn, and others sprouted in quick succession

For each, the grandeur of iron gates marked the threshold between the everyday world and the realm of repose. Gravestones were wrapped into an arboretum: sheltered by the burly trunks of Weeping Beech in winter and flooded with golden carpets of Ginko leaves in autumn. As visitors flocked to these sacred green spaces to picnic and promenade, the rural cemetery movement was born. In both literal and metaphorical terms, the people nourished the trees and the trees nourished people, a bond of science and spirit between them.

Jack Larimore’s work is not about death, but rather the notion that life cannot be possible without lifecycles. Before he became an artist, Larimore was trained in landscape architecture—a field forged in that long shadow of the rural cemetery movement and its successor, the public park, with Frederick Law Olmsted as a founding figure. But for Larimore it was the environmental thinking of Ian McHarg’s 1969 book Design With Nature that sparked his passion. McHarg believed design should be in harmony with the larger cycles of the biosphere, the earth, and, indeed, the universe. Ecology, McHarg argued, was the bridge between science, the arts, and humanity.[iii] This powerful idea took hold for Larimore, and while landscape architecture fell away in favor of an artistic practice, the tree was left standing.

The massive trunk that became a part of Sycamore Story (fig. x) was already partially hollowed out when Larimore began to work with it. As he stood inside carving, the rings that told the story of the tree’s two hundred years as a living, breathing, growing thing became clear. Over the last three centuries, we have lost nearly one third of the earth’s forests. In fact, in the last 100 years, the rate of woodland destruction is nearly equal to the collective loss of the previous nine thousand years, a dizzying statistic.[iv] At Sycamore Story’s threshold, curved stacks of cypress darkened with pine tar form a simple, elliptical boat shape. Inside, it suggests three passengers, their spindly branches of belongings peeking over the top. This wooden vessel has no clear front, nor back. Is the hulking sycamore enclosure a hopeful port of refuge or a dead zone to leave behind?

Pioneering ecologist Suzanne Simard discovered that in the Canadian forests of Douglas Firs the trees are not only singular, separate beings but, in fact, an interconnected community. [v]  Young and old—even different tree species—can signal one another using neurotransmitters similar to our own. These forest networks can warn each other of danger, they can ask for nourishment or help. In other words, they communicate with one another. The oldest and the largest in the forest are what Simard has called ‘Mother Trees,’ the locus of connection in these systems of kinship. Mother Trees are the care workers of the forest, the anchors who keep watch above ground and below it, listening, receiving, and responding.

Seven…Each A Witness (fig. x) speaks to the same kind of shared intelligence Simard discovered. Standing guard, the interior of these seven beings are made from Linden branches turned upside down and resembling both plant roots and the human nervous system. In lore, it is said that you cannot tell a lie under a Linden tree, turning these seven watchers–witnesses–into truth seekers. With their heart-shaped leaves, the Linden tree also symbolizes love. Like the Mother Tree who is able to send extra sustenance to her seedlings in the forest, these beings stand at attention, ready to serve.

As Larimore knows, seven is a powerful number for in the natural world: seven continents, seven colors of the rainbow, the seven days for each phase of the moon. Thus, these seven witnesses surround Feminina’s (fig. x) alight in her ethereal glow. Yet, rather than anchored like a tree, Feminina rises like vapor. A scaffold made from cedar creates a boundary around her. Is it protection or confinement? She pays no mind to this question. Like the moon, she simply and slowly turns towards the light, moving beyond the bounds of her physical self—a reminder that she cannot be contained.

The ongoing cycles of the human world are of concern to Larimore as well. The bonds of daily life are bound up in the spheres that ground Humility (fig. x). Instead of roots, these ladder forms are grounded with soft masses made from the very real stuff of life: bedsheets. Sought out from second hand shops, Larimore has fused them into felt-like orbs merging their domestic histories into a collective. Like the affective labor that changed and washed and folded and made these beds again and again, these objects wear their years of service. Ongoing cycles of labor and care are embedded within them.  At ten feet tall, each of Humility’s eight salvaged wood frameworks move beyond human-scale. As a result, they reach up towards those Mother Trees while keeping humanity in mind just below.

In addition to the pieces in Bonding, Larimore is also at work beyond the gallery walls at Rowan University. Perhaps a return to his roots in landscape architecture and the search for nature’s balance that first sparked his passion, Larimore is working alongside ceramic artist Syd Carpenter on Batsto Homestead, a land-based installation that honors the overlooked history of iron and ceramics production, and the great Pine Barrens that made them possible. Put another way, the piece examines a cycle of exchange where the forest fuels the people. Carpenter and Larimore will reclaim this story, filling their work with living plants, shelter, and artifacts of their making, a living interpretation of a forgotten history, “reminding us of the necessity to tread lightly on this persistent but delicate landscape,” Larimore explains. [vi] The Mother Tree, and patrons of those first garden cemeteries might have had said the same.

What poet and writer Herman Hesse describes, Larimore already knows: “Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.” [vii]

[i] Oliver, Mary, “When I Am Among the Trees,” in Thirst, Boston: Beacon Press, 2006: 6.

[ii] TK

[iii] See Ian McHarg, Design With Nature, Philadelphia: The Falcon Press, 1969.

[iv] Lepore, Jill, “What We Owe Our Trees,” The New Yorker, May 22, 2023: PAGE

[v] See Suzanne Simard, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest, New York: Knopf, 2021.

[vi] Jack Larimore, unpublished description of Batsto Homestead, October 17, 2022.

[vii] Hermann Hesse translated by James White, Wandering: Notes and Sketches, London: Picador Books, 1975: 54.