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Zebra Trees and Boundary Lines: Hope Springs Imaginal

An Arts Afield Project

MacLeish Field Station, Smith College

  • Approximately 12’ x 15’ x 5’, paint, acrylic marker, wood, chrome plated steel, upcycled wood, aluminum and acrylic 

    Zebra Trees and Boundary Lines: Hope Springs Imaginal grew out of a relationship between Leduc and a decomposing birch in Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in 2021. Three years later, Leduc encountered a rhyming “Zebra Tree” at MacLeish Field Station and has since witnessed the falling and ongoing decomposition of Zebra Trees across geographic designations. As the trees alter their states, they mentor Leduc with measured wisdom regarding scales of reliability, experiences of liminality, and black-and-white, linear constructs.

    Visitors are welcome to embody a state of non-dual dynamism by walking on the logs, an echo of the piece’s positioning along the crest of two watersheds (and the orientation of all living entities). From the logs, framed, plein air artifacts of the artist’s acquaintance with four locations within MacLeish reach out and up physically and energetically. Their color, gesture, transparency, and reflection represent—and invite others into—playful moments of porosity and participation with and as an ever-expanding, relational whole.

    To view Zebra Tree research documentation and ongoing artwork, please follow this link to “The Zebra Tree.”

    For additional concepts behind the “plein air artifacts,” please follow this link to “Field Marks.”

BOUNDLESS ENGAGEMENT

If additional inspiration is helpful, please see the drop-downs below which correspond to select components within the piece. These include prompts composed in collaboration with eco-psychology professor, Dr. Michele Wick.

Please note that you are encouraged to reflect wherever you feel most comfortable, be it physically with the artwork or elsewhere. Similarly, engagement modalities are equally open: movement, imagery, music, writing, conversation, thought, sensation…all are worthy means of contemplation and expression.

***For anyone interested in facilitating a specific engagement, please reach out to Rita directly here.***

 

ZEBRA TREES

  • Barred Owl

  • Striking, Illusory Patterns; Grief and the Magic of Dissolution

  • Please check back next week for Dr. Wick’s upcoming prompts!

VERNAL POOL

  • Red-eyed Vireo

  • Reflected Light on Temporal Water; Push and Pull of the Unseen

  • Please check back next week for Dr. Wick’s upcoming prompts!

GHOST PIPE ENCLAVE

  • Ovenbird

  • Gusting, Rustling Wind; Emergence of the Unexpected

  • Please check back next week for Dr. Wick’s upcoming prompts!

MOSSY STREAM

  • Pileated Woodpecker

  • Sparkling, Trickling Water; Fluidity and an undercurrent of Being Held

  • Please check back next week for Dr. Wick’s upcoming prompts!

CHESTNUT GROVE

  • American Redstart

  • A Textured, Ecotonal Threshold; Perpetual Dynamism and Scales of Transitions

  • Please check back next week for Dr. Wick’s upcoming prompts!

How to Arrive

The Smith Collage Ada and Archibald MacLeish Field Station

To access Zebra Trees and Boundary Lines: Hope Springs Imaginal, park in MacLeish’s main lot and take the (wide, well maintained) Poplar Trail all the way to the end (just over half a mile).

As you walk, you are invited to notice the difference between your right and left (East and West) sides: two separate watersheds which result in ecological moments that can be quite distinct.

In addition to being situated on this crest, the installation is at a nexus point where the Homestead, Hemlock, and Mountain Laurel Trails somewhat intersect. You are encouraged to explore any number of MacLeish’s possible pathways—as well as your own pathways of possibility.

For additional research documentation, please follow this link.

Thank you!

Enormous gratitude to Arts Afield, MacLeish Field Station, Smith College, Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest, and all of the incredible humans and more-than-humans who traverse these spaces, including everyone who has allowed the artwork to stimulate contemplation, conversation, and connection. Thank you for the trust, experimentation, collaboration, and creative energy you have gifted through this project and into the world!