October 2nd - November 1st, 2025
Opening reception Thursday October 2nd 5-8pm
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.
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.
For this project I picked the white oak heritage tree in my grandparent’s backyard of Charlotte, NC. It was chopped down shortly after my grandfather died. I grew up under this tree, pushing my cousins on the swing that hung under its shaded canopy. These events marked the first time in over a decade that many of my family members reunited in one place. Standing at the tree stump on a blue-skied spring day, we collectively grieved both our beloved ‘swing tree,’ and Gessler Victor Arzani.
Be sure to check out the accompanying website www.heartwoodsoil.com that 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.