treehuman-bios

Trees of Tomorrow: A Speculative Tour and Workstation is conceptualized, organized, and executed by Margaretha  Haughwout (Guerrilla Grafters), Cody Ann Herrmann, and Julian Louis Phillips, in alliance with Social Practice Queens and the John Bowne High School Agricultural Department; it was initiated along with Greg Sholette and Randall Szott.

Many thanks to Steve Perry and Patryja Jamilowska of John Bowne High School; Chuck Wade; Jack Eichenbaum, Queens Borough Historian; John Choe and the Greater Flushing Chamber of Commerce; Deborah Silverfine and the Voelker-Orth Museum, Bird Sanctuary and Victorian Gardens; Anne Pal and the Bowne House; and the Quaker Meeting House.

The Trunkless Tree artwork is the work of the amazing John Bowne Agricultural Department students: Cherry: Larissa Li; Willow: Angelica ‘Noguera, Katsura: Diana Vazguez, Gingko & Ash: Gabriella Heyward; Sweet Gum: Antonio Crespo; Sycamore: Destiny Irazarry. In 2019 we added  new JBHS students’ artwork: Nevaeh Rochford (Gingko), Jahid Hasan (Mulberry), Barbara Suero (Callery Pear), Yuxin Liu (Mulberry), Jacklin Osorio (Ash).

Design by Benji Geisler and Margaretha Haughwout, Texts by Margaretha Haughwout

Margaretha Haughwout’s personal and collaborative artwork explores the intersections between ideas of technology and wilderness, digital networks and the urban commons, cybernetics and whole systems permaculture — in the context of ecological, technological and human survival. Her active collaborations include the Guerrilla Grafters: an art/ activist group who graft fruit bearing branches onto non-fruit bearing, ornamental fruit trees, and the Coastal Reading Group: consisting of artists from different coasts who trouble the subjects of wilderness, speciation, humanness and ways of knowing through diverse engagements with (non)humans. Haughwout and her collaborators at Hayes Valley Farm, an interim-use urban permaculture farm in downtown San Francisco, cultivated low input ecological systems and developed a unique lateral governance structure that was able to engage a range of different kinds of human input while still navigating complex politics with city agencies. Her work manifests as art, medicine and thought.

Haughwout has been awarded numerous grants for community based work in San Francisco, and her personal and collaborative artwork has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Haughwout received her MFA at the University of California Santa Cruz, her Permaculture Design Certificate from the Urban Permaculture Institute, and has studied with numerous herbalists including Matthew Wood and Autumn Summers. She received certification from the California School of Herbal Studies. In her classes as Assistant Professor of Digital Studio at Colgate University, she draws connections to legacies in conceptual art, new media art, and collaboration, in order to foster distributed, artistic approaches to the interconnected issues of our time/s.

Cody Ann Herrmann is a New York City based artist and community organizer with an interest in participatory design methods, public space, and local sustainable development. Through multidisciplinary arts, community engagement exercises, and grassroots organizing she applies an iterative, human centered approach to environmental problem solving.

Focused on her hometown of Flushing, Queens, Herrmann collaborates with neighborhood nonprofits and civic associations to create accessible public programs directed at communicating themes of urban ecology, resiliency, and land-use to area residents. Currently she serves as the secretary of the Queensboro Hill Flushing Civic Association, and manages ongoing projects such as Queens SOUP and Flushing’s Little Free Library. http://www.codyannherrmann.com/

Phillips is a New York area artist primarily working in performance, sculpture, and video work. Through his studio practice he investigates identity, perception, and problems of interpersonal communication.

Trees of Tomorrow continues his work around shifting perceptions around shared space and language. Currently, Phillips is developing sculptures and performances that combine rituals of the past with the myths of our present time.