I’ve been engaged for a couple of year in the project The Urban Tree Oracle, a multi-sensory collective tool for climate resilience inviting an embodied communing with our more-than-human kin, urban trees.  A child of ancient divination tools that look to the natural world for clues, the Urban Tree Oracle fosters an animistic awareness and insight into the countless threads that bind all beings together in relationship. 

Through a series of written scores, embodiment exercises, handmade tree ink, and drawing prompts I introduce participants to urban trees as our more-than-human kin.  The 26 trees include ones that are longtime residents, some that are displaced plant relatives, some that have seeded themselves. They comprise the urban forest that is so crucial to the health, spirit, and resilience of all and has a central role in climate adaptation.

One aspect of each tree’s role in our ecosystem (slowness, unruliness, wildness, emergence, refuge are some of those aspects) is highlighted and translated to participants through a poetic score, which is experienced in sensory experimental practices.  The tree speaks by way of their tannins, pigments, and material self, that are processed into inks used to create the oracle cards through monoprinting and drawing.

A central focus is partnering with canopy justice and urban forest organizations as well as collaborative work with individuals, groups, trees and many other beings.  As a public amateur who loves to learn out loud, I am always seeking beings of all kinds to invite into relational worldbuilding imaginative forms as a core practice of this project.  I love to cross-pollinate with others who are imagining, making, and expanding this space of art projects that engage our transforming, essential, and resilient ecologies.