Timber Trace
Second Growth
Great Log
How are knowledge and stories transformed, translated, and passed down between generations? What is lost, and what endures?
My grandmother and I have worked together in her forest, just as her father — and many before him — once did. We have sawed, pruned, hauled, and stacked logs, piling them up at the edge of the garden. The logs were heavy, and my grandmother was much stronger than me. I had to use the logging hook to drag them through the woods. She told me about the bracket fungus her father used as a shelf and the bark beetles that eat the spruces. They crawl beneath the bark. Every time we cut a new log, we counted the annual rings.
The logs have followed me into the studio. The forest work continues, but in another form. Through my artistic practice, the material and the memories have shifted, been processed, and taken on new shapes. A log has been copied, becoming another — similar, but not identical. Other logs have left traces in drawings, and fictional stories have grown out of the conversations we had during our days in the woods. I have drawn from what I learned there, but the work has changed. The translation is never exact; some parts are lost, others remain. The story continues, but in new ways.
@boohlin
julia-bohlin@hotmail.com
