Mixing Silly And Superb

Trees are wonderful, much more wonderful, really, than anything you can say about them. Or write about them.   

   But photograph a tree, draw one, paint one, well, now you’ve got something grand, which is what art dealer Andria Friesen figured when she put together “Speak for the Trees,â€� a handsome, hefty, $80 art book filled with mostly very fine paintings and photographs by 79 creative people such as David Hockney and Sally Gall, with a bit of flummery from Yoko Ono, and one fine page devoted to the art and the words of elm tree-preserving photographer Tom Zetterstrom of North Canaan.

   So, the artwork, a lot of it, is gorgeous. Intriguing. Witty. The writing, though, is mostly earnest, woolley-headed and chock full of piffle about trees as “architectural elementsâ€� (April Gornik); as the “life forceâ€� (Hockney); as the source of “experiential photographsâ€� (Gall); and, according to the late Richard St. Barbe Baker  as “the most companionableâ€� of all living things.

    Then we get to Zetterstrom who speaks sensibly and feelingly about elms and their place in the American landscape. Very nice that is, with one of his superb photos of a spiny, leafless elm chosen for the cover.

   Over all, forget the verbiage. This is a grand picture book.

 

“Speak for the Treesâ€� will be available at Amazon. Proceeds from profits go to Esalen and to Findhorn in Scotland, two institutions seeking to unite man and nature.  

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