To Understand a Tree: an Experiential Workshop with Gina Siepel
July 20 @ 10:00 am - 3:30 pm
To Understand a Tree: an Experiential Workshop | Sat, July 20, 2024 | The Schuylkill Center | 8480 Hagy’s Mill Road, Philadelphia 19128 | 10:00 am – 3:30 pm ET | In-person
Join us for an exploratory, hands-on workshop, where we will explore connections between the forest, the tree, and the material of wood. Led by artist Gina Siepel, in collaboration with a naturalist from the Schuylkill Center, we will undertake a guided exploration of the forest. During this workshop, we’ll practice tree identification using field guides and online tools, and we’ll have an overview of the anatomy and physiology of trees. We will also take the opportunity to study the material in depth, splitting logs and other found materials and exploring the life of the tree through an examination of the wood itself.
Pictured above is the summer canopy at the MacLeish Field Station at Smith College—photo by Gina Siepel.
Images above: Lotte Walworth and Silvie Schlein splitting logs. Nov. 2022, photo by Olive Rowell.
Detail image of One-Half Log, Divided into a Chair and Scraps by Gina Siepel, 2022, photo by John Carlano.
About Gina Siepel
Portrait of Gina Siepel
Gina Siepel is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, and woodworker, based in Greenfield, MA (Pocumtuc land). Their artistic practice reflects an engagement with place, history, queer experience, and ecology, and their work integrates conceptual concerns and craftsmanship with a focus on wood as a natural and a cultural material. Gina’s works have been shown in museums and galleries nationally, she is currently a MacLeish Field Station Artist-in-Residence at Smith College, and a 2023 recipient of a Teaching Artist Cohort Grant from the Center for Craft.
Please direct questions to Katie Sorenson, Director of Outreach and Communications at [email protected].