Arbor Day, Arborglyphs…

Arbor Day was celebrated recently and it makes me think of my father! He was always planting trees and bushes, and I remember neighbors saying that if he planted a broom, it would also grow. Arbor Day, which is usually celebrated on the last Friday in April, encourages the planting of trees.

I too have a penchant for trees, and they are a source of imagery for my artwork. ‘Arbor’ pertains to trees and a ‘glyph’ is ‘a symbol used for non-verbal communication’.

I began my series of Arborglyph monoprints back in 2002. I was photographing textures (natural scarring and peeling) on aspen tree bark, and decided to use those images in my printmaking endeavors. I took the negatives and enlarged them in the darkroom. To my delight, the images looked symbolic and resembled calligraphy or characters. I exposed the images to solarplates (photographic printmaking plates) and then printed them onto paper on an etching press. I began with 6″x 6″ solarplates, but quickly starting combining several solarplates with other printmaking techniques to create larger, more complex monoprints. I am still working on that series today. See my PORTFOLIO, Arborglyphs.

Arborglyph: (1 symbol 3) I

© 2002 Linda C. Everson, All Rights Reserved.

Later, I heard an interesting discusssion about aspen carvings on Colorado Public Radio (KCFR). They were talking about Arborglyphs in the southwestern states.  Apparently, the name I was using for my monoprint series is also the name used for the graffiti carved into aspen trees by Basque and Hispanic shepherds while tending their animals from the early 1800’s – 1950’s. Because aspen trees do not have a long life span, documentation is currently being made of these older graffiti laden trees before they die and their legend disappears. Several articles have recently been written about these Arborglyph trees, and many people at art festivals have commented on certain trails to take to find these shepherd images.

Sometimes I photograph the man-made graffiti on the aspen trees, but generally I prefer the natural scarring and peeling. I’ve found that imagery provides more abstracted, symbolic images which tend to look more like calligraphy, and have a more mysterious overtone. I’ve created my own pictorial language of glyphs and actually have my own ‘invented language’.

I also incorporate the glyphs in my artwork into the title signature line on the monoprint.