Tree Song World
Art · Nature · Ceremony · Community
I am an artist, gardener, teacher, community-maker, and lifelong student of the natural world.
My work grows out of curiosity, relationship, and a love of bringing people together. Sometimes that takes the form of a garden, a shared meal, a forest walk, a meditation, a story, a workshop, or a collaborative work of art. Sometimes it begins simply by paying attention: to a tree, a bird, the turning of a season, or the people gathered in a circle.
Through Tree Song and the projects that grow from it, I explore ways of living more creatively and compassionately with one another and with the more-than-human world. Art, nature, ceremony, play, and community all find their way in.
I am especially interested in the places where these things overlap: where making becomes listening, gardens become gathering places, and ordinary moments open into something a little more alive.
Welcome to my world.
With gentle elation may we allow our lives to be touched by grace, and in that spaciousness of being, listen for that song that might be heard growing in our hearts. Whether in a time of chaos and upheaval, or balance and harmony, may we find our home within from which great things are born, both small and grand.
These are a few of my recent projects.
Each has its own shape and way of reaching into the world, but all are rooted in the same questions: How do we live in deeper relationship: with ourselves, with one another, and with the living world around us?
Sweetness of Circles
An evolving collaborative art project created with Tracie Stewart, Sweetness of Circles listens for the conversations happening between people, place, water, plants, creatures, seasons, and the more-than-human world. Art becomes a way of paying attention, participating, and remembering that we belong to something larger.
Loon and Moon
A story born from collaboration and imagination, with Tracie Stewart, Loon and Moon explores relationship, initiation, witnessing, transformation, and belonging. Fear, greed, and entitlement are antagonists to light. Light cannot be contained. Make a box for the light, put a lid on it, and it’s gone.
The PLOT Community Sharing Garden & Newton Medicine Wheel
For many years, the PLOT has been a place where some of the things closest to my heart have come together: gardening, art, food, ceremony, friendship, inclusion, and community. It is a garden not only for growing plants, but for growing relationships between people of all ages and walks of life.
7 Lotus Chi Kung
7 Lotus Chi Kung offers another way of coming home: to the body, the breath, and the quiet movement of energy within us. This practice has become an important part of my own life and something I am grateful to share with others.
Courage to Care: Ripples of Love in Action
I was honoured to have one of my reflections on community and care included in Al Etmanski’s new book, Courage to Care: Ripples of Love in Action: a beautiful gathering of stories about the many ways care, connection, and ordinary acts of kindness can ripple outward into the world.
Some conversations begin with words. Others begin by standing quietly beneath a tree and listening.