Trees each have their own characteristic bark patterns, which are affected by exposure to insects, fire, snow, rain, lightning, sun, and wind. The bark is also altered by animals that eat it, sharpen their antlers on it and live and hide in the tree.

It was not until I started hanging the tree prints in my studio that the Stele Forest I had seen in Xi’an, China came to mind. There, rooms and gardens full of dark looming tablets, covered with calligraphy, memorializing the dead and the living in China, dwarfed me. The limited space in my studio was beginning to have that feeling, as I worked on 20, 8’ tree prints. They too, are memorials to the living and the dead.