THE FOREST

The Forest is my studio, sanctuary, and healing partner. After 33 consecutive months of co-creating, one of the most important aspects of this relationship continues to be the negotiation of pathways. When I first entered, I was not able to make out individual trees for the white noise of thorns and vines. As I adjust to a wilder rhythm, I perceive energetic buffers radiating from the trees. As I respect those boundaries, harmonious routes to navigate the terrain become obvious. I vision with those in my immediate vicinity – plants, fungi, animals, and other energies – observing opportunities to work with fallen branches, living vines, and other plant partners to sculpt islands of micro-ecosystems as I simultaneously clear pathways. During this process, the vibrations of my interactions are gathered as data by the mycelial network, analyzed and distributed. From here the network suggests places I have been invited to visit and co-create further, by shifting my awareness, eerily like an algorithm.

Forest Chapel for a Healing Activation is one of several co-created spaces woven into the larger landscape, On the Path Uphill to the Soulmate Tree. (Itself one of many trails within an eleven-acre swath of Forest.)

As I vision to determine flows of energy and elements, internal spaciousness manifests and I am more easily able to breathe with the land; to perceive nodes of sacred spaces, and the pathways that define them.

I sketch with branches, discerning distinct boundaries; to accommodate and protect, to co-exist, and ultimately to thrive in an ongoing dance, respecting each of our unique physical forms and ways of being.

Symbiosis Sculptures are what I have named the result of my engagement with an abundance of widely considered “invasive” vines - Wild Grape (Vitis spp), Oriental Bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus), Multiflora Rose (Rosa multiflora). I wonder if a redirection of energy might be possible, away from the vines clambering up tree canopies, and instead focusing down, interweaving with other vines to form curving handrails along the trail; all while they continue to stabilize eroding hillsides.

We are co-visioning a long-form architecture.