BirchBarkMosaics

The first gifts of birch bark were random offerings from nature. 

In the fall of 2006, my first months in Alaska, shaggy pieces snagged by the wind and tangled in the fireweed around birch, aspen, and black spruce forests outside Fairbanks caught my eye. I picked them up, and imagined the possibilities, then brought them home to my improvised studio/writing room … and set out on this journey. 

When I moved back to Michigan, I toted several bins full of birch bark stripped from the plentiful piles of firewood found ready to heat cabins across the 49th State. The variety and vibrancy of that Alaskan stash still enhances my artistic process, over a decade later.

In more recent times, friends and family kindly brought pieces of stray birch bark back as souvenirs of their travels – always found, never poached from a living tree, they assured me: my sister whose work took her to Vermont; a colleague who vacationed in Acadia National Park in Maine; another who found driftwood in Lake Superior on a kayaking trip; a neighbor whose daughter was married under a chuppah formed from birch twigs. 

All of these gifts of the earth have been gifted to me, and in turn I try to give back a small token of my appreciation in the form of a keepsake: a magnet, a keychain, a vase, a special jar. 

For over ten years, I have ‘played’ with birch bark and given away the vast majority of what I’ve made, hundreds of creations at least. The ideas and explorations have not ceased, only increased exponentially as new ways of seeing and expressing myself in birch bark emerge. Soon I hope to display some of the original canvases I’ve created in a gallery, and perhaps sell the repurposed functional art pieces as well, but the mental shift from the gift economy to the capitalist one is a challenge that many artists have faced – and survived – indeed some even thrived. 

Meanwhile, I’m grateful for the gifts imparted from birch trees, and others as well, especially after wrapping up the potent book “The Overstory” by Richard Powers. In it, trees are subtle but enduring communicators, if we only pause to listen; and every tree is a ‘giving tree.’ Truly.