Born | September 20, 1957 |
---|---|
Occupation | Arborsculptor, nursery owner, writer |
Language | English |
Genre | Horticulture |
Subject | Arborsculpture |
Literary movement | Environmental art, Environmental humanities |
Notable works | How to Grow a Chair: The Art of Tree Trunk Topiary with Barbara Delbol (1995) Arborsculpture: Solutions for a Small Planet (2005) |
Spouse | Maya Many Moons Reames |
Children | Myray Reames |
Website | |
arborsmith | |
Literatureportal |
Richard C. Reames (born September 20, 1957) is an American artist, arborsculptor, nurseryman, writer, and public speaker. He lives and works in Williams, Oregon. [1]
Reames coined the word "arborsculpture" to describe the art of shaping living tree trunks and woody plants into sculptural forms, furniture and shelters. [2] [3] [4] : 24 His writing and artistic practice are grounded in ecological principles of living in harmony with nature and with creating living structures from trees. [5] He has written two books on arborsculpture and tree shaping.
Reames was appointed, in 2005, as the "international arborsculpture coordinator" for the World Expo's Growing Village in Aichi, Japan; [6] his work was also exhibited there. [5]
Richard Reames was born in 1957. [7] He grew up near Santa Cruz, California, which is within ten miles of Axel Erlandson’s famed "Circus Trees," known at that time as The Lost World, a mid-century roadside attraction. [2]
Reames's mother showed him the value of working with nature including vegetable gardening. Reames studied horticulture, biology, botany and log-house building in college, however the structure of the educational establishment did not appeal to him. [7] [8] He traveled the country by hitchhiking or by road-tripping in a 1969 Chevy van for over a decade. Throughout this time he worked as an itinerant landscaper. Reames has stated "I was volunteer homeless. A real gypsy." [7] During the times he was not on road trips, he made a living selling wild herbs and mushrooms he foraged through his knowledge of wildcrafting. [2]
In 1991, he met Maya Many Moons in southwest Oregon. They settled down in Williams, Oregon near the border of Klamath National Forest, where they bought land in cooperation with another couple. Over a period of three years he constructed an octagonal two-story log house, 24 feet in diameter, using dead standing trees and native stone for the foundation. [8] [4] Reames and Many Moons have a daughter named Myray Reames. [4] [7] [9] During this time he founded Arborsmith Studios. [2]
Reames uses basic tools and ancient grafting techniques to produce his works of arborsculpture, furniture and functional objects. His work involves the time-based processes of bending, pruning, grafting, and multiple plantings that are similar to those used in bonsai but most closely related to espalier. [5]
In an interview with Joshua Foer in Cabinet Magazine, Reames describes some of the ecological principles behind his work as being grounded in a desire to teach others ways to live in harmony with trees and therefore with nature. He is interested in ecological advantages of working with trees such as erosion control, carbon dioxide sequestration, food sources, habitat creation for wildlife, and climate change mitigation. [5]
One of his primary inspirations was the work of Axel Erlandson, and his Tree Circus, and John Krubsack, known for his Living Chair. [7] In 1993, with Erlandson in mind, he started Arborsmith Studios, a tree nursery and outdoor art studio. [4] [7] Other influences include the 18th century Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg, the 19th century Austrian mystic, Jakob Lorber, and modern pioneers of arborsculptural tree shaping such as Arthur Wiechula among others. [5] Reames was also intrigued with the organic architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, whose work "bring[s] nature into the house." [7]
In 2000, together with the people of the town of Jōkōji, Japan, he and John Gathright planted 1100 trees, which, combined with existing trees, created the "Laughing Happy Tree Park." The environmental installation included a living tree house with living furniture. [4]
Some of his arborsculptures were exhibited at the Growing Village Pavilion of the World Expo 2005 in Nagakute, Aichi, Japan. [10] The producer and organizer of the project was John Gathright. [11] [12] [13] Reames participated as a team member of the Growing Village Pavilion, [14] [9] and in 2005, he was appointed the international arborsculpture coordinator, overseeing the work of artists from several countries. [6]
Reames has lectured internationally on arborsculpture, [14] and gives live demonstrations of bending and weaving a chair at garden shows, fairs and folk art festivals throughout the U.S. [7] [5] [15] [16]
Reames, like the artist Konstantin Kirsch, has been exploring sustainable, living architecture using tree branches to form latticeworks that can be trained and designed into cylindrical, multi-room dwellings. These botanical domes or self-growing treehouses can form a sustainable abode that grows fruit and other edible foods, and can also utilize waste within a closed-loop system. [17] The German language book, Lebende Bauten - trainierbare Tragwerke (Living buildings - trainable structures) features a chapter on Reames. [18]
After the publication of his first book, How to Grow a Chair: The Art of Tree Trunk Topiary (1995), he was invited to create site-specific arborsculptures by various clients, who he then mentors on the care of the living installations. His arborsculptures have been created in gardens throughout the West Coast. [7]
In 2023, Reames worked with a group of 40 others to plant a Sequoia-Sanctuary a major work of land art in the Pacifica Preserve in Oregon, in the form of a circle of 114 sequoia seedling trees, three-feet apart, in a 100-foot diameter. When fully grown the environmental sculpture will create a 7,000 square-foot "sanctuary" space of intertwined branches. The variety of sequoia seedlings that were planted are the endangered Sequoiadendron giganteum, giant sequoia which can live as long as 3,000 years. [19]
In 1995, Reames coined the word "arborsculpture" to describe tree-trunk sculptural modifications as art. [5] The word has since been used by several writers, creative practitioners and scholars. [20] [21] [22] [23] Arborsculpture has also been called "arbor sculpture" [8] and "arborisculpture". In French it is known as l'arborisculpture), [24] [25] and in German arborsculpture is known as Baumplastiken. [18] Reames refers to the use of arborsculpture to produce architectural structures or dwellings as "arbortecture", [5] it has also been called "arborarchitecture" by Olga O. Smolina who has written on arborsculpture and on Reames. [26] [20] Arbortecture is called Baumarchitektur in German. [18] [20] [27]
Reames uses arborsculptural tree bending and shaping techniques to create his work and also uses the horticultural and arboricultural techniques of ring barking, approach grafting, pruning, and framing, in various combinations, to craft his artworks and functional objects. [4] [28]
Reames has described his arborsculpture tree shaping practice: [29]
Arborsculpture is a unique art form that has been called the ultimate branch of topiary with the potential to save the environment. There are other words and terms that are used to describe this art. Pleaching, grafting, permaculture, tree trunk topiary, botanical art, botanical architecture, biotechture, living art, visionary art, and really weird.
— Richard Reames
When making architectural arborsculptures such as fences, Reames prefers using the diamond pattern, a structurally sound design. This technique has been used by traditional Belgian fence crafters however Reames creates a tighter diamond grid by planting the trees closer together to keep certain wildlife such as deer out of an area. He has also made gazebos and a Fruit Room; the latter was created by espaliering together apple, plum, cherry and pear trees. Another arbortectural project is his Living House, a 22-foot diameter dwelling created from 77 alder trees planted 11 inches apart, intentionally based on multiples of elevens. [8]
On Reames' property in Oregon, there are a dozen nursery beds, each of which are between 100 and 200 feet long, constructed in a configuration to optimize their orientation to the sun. The beds are filled with thousands of tree saplings, which he refers to as "art supplies." Saplings are transplanted from November to March, the dormant season for working with bare-root trees. In winter through early spring, the tree trunks are sculpted by bending, weaving and twisting as this is the time of year they are most pliable. The young trees are then attached to a metal or wood support structure until they are mature enough to retain their shape without support. [8]
The medieval and post-medieval English scholar, Kathleen Kelly, identifies both modern and medieval examples of arborsculptures. In her paper, Anthophilia and the Medieval Ecologies of Grafting, she cites the work of Axel Erlandson as exemplary of "extreme grafting as art" to produce "astonishing arborsculptures". [30] She also places a painting from circa 1410, Paradiesgärtlein (The Littile Garden of Paradise) by Meister des Frankfurter Paradiesgärtleins an unknown medieval painter who is also known as the Upper Rhenish Master, as an example of aesthetic inarched grafting of tree trunks. The painting, which is in the collection of the Städel Museum, depicts Dorothea of Caesarea, the patron saint of gardeners, picking fruit from a tree. [30] [31]
The science journalist James Nestor writes that "Arborsculpture is the art of shaping living trees into furniture, sculpture, and shelters. Part grazing and grafting, pleaching and patience, it exists in the shady area between landscaping, gardening, and furniture design." [1] Nestor states that arborsculpture can be traced back to a 16th-century illuminated manuscript painting by Jean Perréal, La Complainte de Nature à l'Alchimiste Errant (The Lament of Nature to the Wandering Alchemist) that depicts a lavish "living chair". Reames' interpretation of the painting is that the angel is criticizing the alchemist for attempting to make gold out of lead, when nature herself can make fruit out of dirt. [18]
In the book, Between Earth and Sky: Our Intimate Connections to Trees, the author Nalini M. Nadkarni, an ecosystem ecologist, wrote that gardeners who practice arborsculpture have "vision, patience, and humor" and names Axel Erlandson as the "grand old man of arborsculpture." [32]
Reames believes that "arbortecture" is the future of arborsculpture. [1] Arbotecture is a viable green alternative in urban design. [33] According to Reames, arbor-architects (Baumarchitekten) can design and build energy-efficient structures that have a reciprocal "exchange with the natural environment" and that these dwellings should be planned specifically for a location and environment. He has stated that he believes that the natural environment should enter into the house, and the interior of the building can extend outdoors. [18] Alison Gillespie writes in her article, Taking treehouses to a whole new level in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, that arborsculpture is not a new practice but when combined with aeroponics it can be used for sustainable design applications. [34]
In 1995, Reames published the book How to Grow a Chair: The Art of Tree Trunk Topiary with Barbara Delbol co-authoring. [35] [36] The book details his process of shaping trees to create chairs, benches fences, and other structures. [28] [37]
In 2005, Reames published the book Arborsculpture: Solutions for a Small Planet, that describes the history of tree and woody plant shaping, and elaborates on a selection of practitioners in the field of tree shaping. [4] [38]
Reames has written for Compass Magazine in the March/April 2006 issue. [9] [ dead link ]
Reames' books have been called "reference books" by Vallas and Courard in the journal, Frontiers of Architectural Research. The authors go on to state that Reames has "inspired many architects," [23]
His book, Arborsculpture: Solutions for a Small Planet was reviewed in the Utne Reader . [39]
Sequoiadendron giganteum, also known as the giant sequoia, giant redwood or Sierra redwood is a coniferous tree, classified in the family Cupressaceae in the subfamily Sequoioideae. Giant sequoia specimens are the most massive trees on Earth. They occur naturally only in groves on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountain range of California.
Topiary is the horticultural practice of training perennial plants by clipping the foliage and twigs of trees, shrubs and subshrubs to develop and maintain clearly defined shapes, whether geometric or fanciful. The term also refers to plants which have been shaped in this way. As an art form it is a type of living sculpture. The word derives from the Latin word for an ornamental landscape gardener, topiarius, a creator of topia or "places", a Greek word that Romans also applied to fictive indoor landscapes executed in fresco.
Cupressaceae is a conifer family, the cypress, with worldwide distribution. The family includes 27–30 genera, which include the junipers and redwoods, with about 130–140 species in total. They are monoecious, subdioecious or (rarely) dioecious trees and shrubs up to 116 m (381 ft) tall. The bark of mature trees is commonly orange- to red-brown and of stringy texture, often flaking or peeling in vertical strips, but smooth, scaly or hard and square-cracked in some species.
Expo 2005 was a world expo held for 185 days between Friday, March 25 and Sunday, September 25, 2005, in Aichi Prefecture, Japan, east of the city of Nagoya. Japan has also hosted Expo '70 Osaka, Expo '75 Okinawa, Expo '85 Tsukuba, and Expo '90 Osaka and will host Expo 2025 Osaka.
Espalier is the horticultural and ancient agricultural practice of controlling woody plant growth for the production of fruit, by pruning and tying branches to a frame. Plants are frequently shaped in formal patterns, flat against a structure such as a wall, fence, or trellis, and also plants which have been shaped in this way.
Environmental art is a range of artistic practices encompassing both historical approaches to nature in art and more recent ecological and politically motivated types of works. Environmental art has evolved away from formal concerns, for example monumental earthworks using earth as a sculptural material, towards a deeper relationship to systems, processes and phenomena in relationship to social concerns. Integrated social and ecological approaches developed as an ethical, restorative stance emerged in the 1990s. Over the past ten years environmental art has become a focal point of exhibitions around the world as the social and cultural aspects of climate change come to the forefront.
This is an alphabetical index of articles related to gardening.
Tree shaping uses living trees and other woody plants as the medium to create structures and art. There are a few different methods used by the various artists to shape their trees, which share a common heritage with other artistic horticultural and agricultural practices, such as pleaching, bonsai, espalier, and topiary, and employing some similar techniques. Most artists use grafting to deliberately induce the inosculation of living trunks, branches, and roots, into artistic designs or functional structures.
Axel Erlandson was a Swedish American farmer who shaped trees as a hobby, and opened a horticultural attraction in 1947 called "The Tree Circus", advertised with the slogan "See the World's Strangest Trees Here".
The Fab Tree Hab is a hypothetical ecological home design developed at MIT in the early 2000s by Mitchell Joachim, Javier Arbona and Lara Greden. With the idea of easing the burden humanity places on the environment with conventional housing by growing "living, breathing" tree homes.
Stephen C. Sillett is an American botanist specializing in old growth forest canopies. As the first scientist to enter the redwood forest canopy, he pioneered new methods for climbing, exploring, and studying tall trees. Sillett has climbed many of the world's tallest trees to study the plant and animal life residing in their crowns and is generally recognized as an authority on tall trees, especially redwoods.
Jean Perréal -- sometimes called Peréal, Johannes Parisienus or Jean De Paris -- was a successful portraitist for French Royalty in the first half of the 16th century, as well as an architect, sculptor and limner of illuminated manuscripts. He was active mostly in France and in Italy and London as well.
Pleaching or plashing is a technique of interweaving living and dead branches through a hedge creating a fence, hedge or lattices. Trees are planted in lines, and the branches are woven together to strengthen and fill any weak spots until the hedge thickens. Branches in close contact may grow together, due to a natural phenomenon called inosculation, a natural graft. Pleach also means weaving of thin, whippy stems of trees to form a basketry effect.
Living sculpture is any type of sculpture that is created with living, growing grasses, vines, plants or trees. It can be functional and/or ornamental. There are several different types of living sculpture techniques, including topiary, sod works, tree shaping and mowing and crop art. Most living sculpture technique requires horticultural skills, such as grafting or pruning, to create the art.
Moses Richard Schultz was an American furniture designer. He was responsible for several iconic and notable creations in the 1950s–1990s through his firm Richard Schultz Design, Inc..
The Green Cathedral or De Groene Kathedraal located near Almere in the Netherlands, is an artistic planting of Lombardy poplars that mimics the size and shape of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, Reims, France. The Green Cathedral is 150 m (490 ft) long and 75 m (246 ft) wide, and the mature poplar trees are about 30 m (98 ft) tall.
Arthur Wiechula was a German landscape engineer. His marriage to Lydia Lindnau, produced three children, Margarethe (1895), Max (1897) and Ernst (1900).
Christopher Cattle is a British furniture designer who has developed a process of growing furniture by shaping living trees. Cattle calls his work GrownUp Furniture but it is also known as Grown Furniture.
Full Grown is a UK company that grows trees into chairs, sculptures, lamps, mirror frames and tables. It was co-founded by Gavin Munro in 2005.
There are various methods of tree shaping. There are strengths and weaknesses to each method as well commendable tree species for each process. Some of these processes are still experimental, whereas others are still in the research stage. These methods use a variety of horticultural and arboricultural techniques to achieve an intended design. Chairs, tables, living spaces and art may be shaped from growing trees. Some techniques used are unique to a particular practice, whereas other techniques are common to all, though the implementation may be for different reasons. These methods usually start with an idea of the intended outcome. Some practitioners start with detailed drawings or designs. Other artists start with what the tree already has. Each method has various levels of involvement from the tree shaper.
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