Nature’s Spirit, Alive

‘I have been embedding myself in the forest for the past three years. Mainly I’ve been attempting to become a birch tree,” writes Madeline Schwartzman in an artist statement accompanying a new exhibition at The Re Institute, the 1960s hayloft barn-turned-gallery space of sculptor Henry Klimowicz in Millerton, N.Y. At the opening of “Face Nature: Experiments in Trees,” Schwartzman came as close to her goal as artistically feasible. It’s not often that crowds in Dutchess County are treated to performance art, few attendees seeming to suspect that one of the great guardians of White Birch that Schwartzman had lined up in the loft — Oz-like Tin Men in hunking wooden armor — would come to life. In a suit of birch bark that encased her entire form, with a long, trunk-like helmet that rose above the height of those left surprised and bewildered, phones in hand photographing the performance, Schwartzman lumbered — for lack of a better word — around the space, a crude, mythology spirit of nature’s ancient voice. Was it’s intention gentle, or vengeful for our wrongdoings to the forest? The trees did not speak.

Photo by Alexander Wilburn

Photo by Alexander Wilburn

Photo by Alexander Wilburn

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