Dreaming Trees:

We’re Alive too, with dreams of stars and moon

Environmental Art by Vicki Milewski

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 Dreaming Trees is an Environmental Art collection composed of site specific land art engaging trees in different forests around the world that are going to be taken down to prevent the spread of the pine beetle.

 

Dreaming Trees is ecologically focused encompassing both activist and pedagogical areas.  Vicki Milewski seeks to activate change in how the pine beetle is remediated while also seeking to change public behaviors like moving wood between forests as many campers, tourists and home owners do.

 

Dreaming Trees also seeks to rebuild relationships we have with nature, in this instance forests, through showing that trees dream and have familial practices in how elder trees create, nurture and grow the next generation of the forest.

 

Dreaming Trees as an Environmental Art Collection created by Vicki Milewski in collaboration with scientists, city planners, architects, forest rangers and others. These collaborators select appropriate trees for painting choosing trees along roads and trails that will be seen by others.  Milewski paints tress with stars and moons to show how the trees dream.  Sometimes the artist will use glow in the dark paint to highlight a road’s curve and the message that these very trees will be cut down to save the rest of the surrounding forest.   Milewski also works with these varied stakeholders to determine how and where to disseminate educational materials about the art collection and the danger of transporting fallen wood.   The artist has been the lead agent of change for many forestry projects around the world concerning pine beetle infestations and has educated over 1 million people about the harm transporting wood can bring to other forests because the pine beetle and/or its larvae can live inside the transported wood and begin another infestation wherever that wood is taken.   The artist has also been researching the current theory that pine beetles may also hitch rides onto vehicles traveling between forests and is considering a new collection based entirely on the pine beetle itself.

 

Dreaming Trees:  We’re Alive too, with dreams of stars and moons is a homage to the many trees lost to the pine beetle that has devastated forests across the world.  The Black Hills in South Dakota inspires this collection with its resiliency against this invasive species, the thoughtfulness of the people who care for this forest and the trees as individuals who dream as they watch their relations being sacrificed to save others, and those trees who dream as their last heroic effort to bring our eyes and minds to the skies--our eventual journey to new planets bringing with us what we have learned and not what has caused the pine beetle to become so strong.  The trees dream of stars and moons in their trunks and in their leaves. 

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Initiating deeper relationships with the natural world is one of the overarching goals in Vicki’s artistic practice.