Inspired by the drawings, photographs, and etchings of Frank A. Waugh (1869-1943), an overlooked pioneer who promoted ideas about native planting design and the emerging field of modern ecology.
Working with 5th graders at our local elementary school we began observing winter trees.
We also talked about where paper comes from. Local newspaper editors and a chief of printing tell us their newsprint is made from both recycled fibers and softwoods like spruce, fir, balsam fir or pine. Our local newsprint comes from Kruger and Resolute Forest Products, milled primarily in Canada. The students created over twenty winter tree collages which will be exhibited at our local art gallery in Leverett in February. The images vary from the use of text only to some using photographs, especially of people.
Links to learn more about paper-making: https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2016/eccc/En153-6-32-1996-eng.pdf https://www.resolutefp.com/Products/Paper/Newsprint/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_engineering
Some of newspaper tree collages using newspaper text.Some of the collages using photo images especially of people.
A different kind of post this week invites you to learn something about the little known botanic artist Marianne North and her remarkable life painting portraits of trees and other plants. Frank Waugh traveled to London’s Kew Gardens a few times in his life after the Marianne North Gallery had opened. It is possible that he visited it, but there is no record of what his visits entailed. Learning about her life, travels, and paintings would have been of interest to Waugh and his family.
Marianne North The Calaveras Grove of The Big Tree or Wellingtonia, in The Evening 1875 Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew Gardens
When Marianne North’s asked Kew Garden Director Sir Joseph Hooker to include coffee and tea in the gallery she would build to house her botanic paintings, he refused. So instead she then designed two door panels in her gallery to host her paintings of coffee and tea plants to welcome visitors. Her gallery opened in 1882 with over 800 of her paintings and remains open today.
Marianne North traveled the world over to paint botanic species in remote areas. One example, painting 624, preserved among her more than 800 in the Marianne North Gallery in Kew Gardens, is entitled Curious Plants from the Forest of Matang, Sarawak, Borneo. The first herbarium specimen of this plant was not collected until 1973, nearly 100 years later.The species is now named Chassalia northiana T.Y. Yu in Marianne’s honor, the fifth plant species to bear her name.
Painting 624 Chassalia northiana by Marianne North at the Marianne North Gallery, Kew Gardens
Frank A. Waugh visited London’s Epping Forest where he enjoyed photographing and sketching oaks, birches, and beeches in the summer of 1936, perhaps for his last time. He used his photographs and drawings sometimes to compose etchings he would create later in his home studio. His etching, Pollard Oaks, dates from September of 1936. With his work as a consultant to the U. S. Forest Service, Waugh would have been interested in Eppings’s rich forest management history and practices. There the techniques of lopping, cutting, pollarding and coppicing evolved from the 12th century. On the land Verderers or Commoners could graze their cattle and gather wood to use for fuel, emphasizing very practical uses of the forest.
In his portraits of trees Waugh wanted people to appreciate trees, especially for their beauty. But the roots of their practical values were never lost on him. For more background about forest management techniques at Epping Forest visit:
