The Sharon Academy in Vermont recently held a fundraiser for its art program that generated over $19,000. I painted and contributed a coat to the auction, which sold for $475. Here our exchange student Fred, from the Masai tribe in Kenya, is modeling the coat. He is the first one from his family of 12 siblings to live outside of his country.
Jay Mead and Peter Heller
I am pleased to share these written reflections on my SculptureFest piece, “The Forest Within,” by friend and author Peter Heller. A former Upper Valley resident, Peter wrote the bestselling novel The Dog Stars in 2012. – Jay
The Tree Artist
Jay Mead at SculptureFest
A Tribute to an Oldest Friend
Take a beat up old farm shed. Prop it up, true the posts, re-roof it. Give it back its humble life. Then reach for the medium you have loved since you were a kid: trees.
Trees are everything to you. You grew up on a tree farm in New Hampshire. You tapped trees to make syrup as a teenager, cut and bucked and split them for firewood. You walked and skied among them for inspiration and solace in high school. And after you moved to the Bay Area you went to the sequoias and redwoods whenever you could. The giants were your cathedral. Those forests did something to the light and the air that changed the way you saw yourself in the world. When you lost two younger sisters and a father that is where you prayed, and when you had children of your own it is where you gave thanks. They gave you back your smallness, which every person needs. Your awe. Your oxygen. They rooted you to your life and reminded you that those that walk and sway on earth are myriad, are your brothers and sisters, and that we are entrusted with certain souls.
The Forest Within
In San Francisco, your first big installation was a giant redwood stump, the kind they used to drive cars through, erected in the middle of the city and built of discarded redwood lumber. I helped you build it. Remember? The crowds that stopped, the mouths that fell open? It was a sensation, an organic monument to nature and loss.
So, trees. Back here in Vermont you cut twenty saplings—the field edge needed to be cut back–and you painted them white and planted them inside the dark shed on a ground of soft red mulch. The old pavilion suddenly looked like it would burst its seams with pride. Because it was now a shadow box that held a forest. A ghost forest. A forest of birch at night, or aspen. It was a little church, and inside danced the rows of slender luminous trees, and it was sepulcher also, and the forest was skeletal, a photographic negative of the living world, of what it may become. You called it The Forest Within. And you planted it on the King Farm* where we can all see it and wonder why it resonates with some green thing that moves inside, that sways against our own bones.
* King Farm is in Woodstock, Vermont and hosts the annual SculptureFest.
Enjoy this time-lapse video produced by Colleen Bozuwa of my “When the Moon Came to Earth” installation at King Farm in Woodstock, Vermont. Thanks, Colleen!
Also, Marie Kirn of Hartland, Vermont gave my piece a kind endorsement, saying it is “striking and moving” in this broadcast of Vermont Public Radio’s En Plein Air. Listen to the short segment.
Daniel plays Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata on my piece, “Tree Songs,” in a video by friend Colleen Bozuwa.
“Tree Songs” is comprised of saplings I painted white and screwed to a piano I painted black. By attaching saplings to the piano, it appears to have the forest reclaim it, or perhaps people will see the piano as growing among a bunch of saplings. There is a beautiful rhythm to a grove of saplings clustered in a forest. The repetition of these vertical elements should compliment the black and white keys of the piano.
The piece was installed outside the Montshire Museum in Norwich, Vermont for the month of July. It was part of Dartmouth College’s celebration of the Hopkins Center for the Arts’ 50th anniversary, “Hands on Pianos.” Mine is one of 50 pianos that were altered by artists and installed throughout the Upper Valley. See more images of the creative process on the official Hands on Pianos website and in a previous post on this blog.
“Jay brought stunning art and a wonderful message to Sharon Elementary School on May 15. He did a beautiful presentation of A Little Farm Story that entertained the kindergartners, 1st and 2nd graders and led to a lively discussion of farming practices and local agriculture with the 3rd and 4th graders.
His sharing of The Turning was a terrific chance for 5th and 6th graders to see a graphic novel in progress and to think about issues of climate change. A rich and rewarding experience for all!”
– Catherine Freese, Sharon Elementary School Librarian
Photos by Catherine Freese
Learn more about bringing Jay to your school or organization for a workshop!