Learning With Trees

This curatorial project collaborates with artists who center trees in their practice, learning with them to create artworks that shift our perceptions of our relationship with the natural world and with each other.

Trees are the lungs and beating heart of our planet. They are living beings fundamental to the Earth’s stability and essential in providing solutions to counter the adverse effects of climate change. Artists have long recognized the power of trees, weaving them into cultural, religious, and spiritual narratives across millennia. At this pivotal moment for planetary sustainability, artists illuminate what trees can teach us about survival, connection, and time.

Learning with Trees: Artisti Per Soluzioni Climatiche e Ambientali,
Presented at Sala 1 – Centro Internazionale d’Arte Contemporanea, Rome
September 26–November 8, 2025

The exhibition featured recent work by four female New England-based artists: Yuko Oda, Kendall Reiss, Cristi Rinklin, and Ash Eliza Williams. They have each placed trees at the center of their practice for this new body of artwork, grounded by careful observation, delicate dialogue, and visionary imagination.

Gallery view showing Cristi Rinklin, Yuko Oda, and Ash Williams

Kendall Reiss
Yuko Oda, A Prayer for Now
Yuko Oda, A Prayer for Now detail
Yuko Oda
Cristi Rankling
Ash Williams
Gallery Installation View

PRESS:
Zero Roma
Roma Art Week // VIDEO INTERVIEW
Art Spiel, Nov. 4, 2025

BOSTON SUMMER 2026

I partnered with Tree Boston to bring two Learning With Trees exhibitions to Boston in the summer of 2026

Learning with Trees: Artists and Ecologies of Connection

At Boston City Hall, May 26–August 14

Featuring Bruce Myren, Joel Janowitz, just practice (Amanda Ugorji and Sophie Weston Chien)

At HallSpace, June 13–August 14

Featuring Diana Arcadipone, Emily Auchincloss, Clint Baclawski, Alexandra Ionescu, Jane Marsching, Yuko Oda, Elizabeth James Perry, Kendall Reiss, Cristi Rinklin, Sarah Slavick

Learning with Trees: Artists and Ecologies of Connection

“Between every two pine trees,
there is a door leading to a new way of life.”
–John Muir

Trees are the lungs of our planet—living beings fundamental to human well-being, Earth’s stability, and essential to countering climate change. Artists have long recognized the power of trees, weaving them into cultural, religious, and spiritual narratives across millennia. At this pivotal moment for planetary sustainability, artists illuminate what trees can teach us about survival, connection, and time.

This exhibition, organized in collaboration with Tree Boston, brings together local artists who center trees as collaborators and teachers in their practice. The exhibition directly advances Tree Boston’s mission of building community around tree planting and preservation, education, and advocacy in Boston’s environmentally marginalized neighborhoods, demonstrating how art transforms our relationship with urban nature.

Through painting, sculpture, textiles, installations, and participatory works, these artists reveal how trees thrive in cooperative forest communities, communicate through underground mycorrhizal networks, and experience time across centuries rather than years, ultimately bringing us, humans, closer to trees. The work carries particular urgency here: Boston is situated within the Boreal Forest, the Northern Hemisphere’s vast carbon sink, which has lost nearly half of its expanse since the Industrial Revolution.

These artists forge new pathways for Bostonians to recognize themselves within a larger living network. They reveal trees as teachers, timekeepers, and community builders—showing us how our survival is intertwined with theirs, our roots entangled beneath the city streets, our futures growing toward the same light.