October 2025 / Heartwood

Heartwood

Curated by Colleen RJC Bratton

Artists:
Grace Gonzalez
Julie Alpert
Yell Freeman
Elizabeth Arzani
Colleen RJC Bratton
Sophia Anderson
Clara McClenon
Sofya Belinskaya
Bonnie Smerdon
McKenna Haley
Saba Askari
Shelby Wilson
Max Cerami
Corinne Barber

October 2 - November 2, 2025

Opening Reception, Thursday, October 2, 5-8pm

Gallery Hours:
Friday–Sunday, 12–5pm

Within nature trees function as complex and intelligent communities. In particular, groves of trees rely on one another for support during intense storms. In a healthy forest, when a strong gust comes along and begins to bend a tree, its neighboring tree will act as a buffer, preventing its kin from bending so far that it breaks. When the wind relents and the tree returns upright, its neighbor on the other side catches it so that the return journey is gently supported as well. So we too can help support one another as we weather these contemporary, violent systems.

Heartwood is an amalgamation of shared experience centered around trees. A continuation of Colleen RJC Bratton’s collaborative projects, Heartwood asked artists around the country to choose a tree that they were or wanted to be in relationship with. The artists were asked to use the trunk of that tree as a physical support while they participated in a somatic exercise led by Bratton. Composed of the responses to this exercise, photographs of the chosen trees and natural materials sourced and shaped by Bratton, the exhibition reveals a deeper experience of inter-species communion. 

An accompanying website www.heartwoodsoil.com invites visitors to participate in this same collective experience and provides sources for further research into the complexity of trees and ways in which we can support our non-human neighbors.