Wound Wood 2023
June 14th - August 28th, 2023
There is a certain tree stump that I have walked past for as long as I can remember on my morning walks at a local park. Squaxin Park is one of my favorite places in my home town of Olympia, WA to experience south sound beaches and trails that wander through old growth forests. On one of my routes I passed a stump where a once vibrant healthy tree stood tall. Now only the remnants of its presence remain having been reduced to a hollow stump. Time, weather and a huge number of microorganisms are all critical influencers that contribute to the breaking down of the wood and integrating it back onto the forest floor.
Compartmentalization
This stump has a very distinct look compared to other stumps I have photographed over the years. The center is hollow having rotted away years before. An enlarged lip encircles the hollow center, looking like someone carefully took clay and added this soft edge rolling towards the hollow. One day I happened upon a forester who was assessing trees within the park and he explained that this was wound wood; other trees were sending resources to the stump to help heal its injury. “Even though they are dead – trees find a way to help each other out postmortem” notes Allie Wisniewski in her Nurse Logs: Healers of the Forest article. If a tree has been attacked, Bruce Kreitler explains, “and develops a dead spot it's going to stay dead forever. They use the process of growing to try and wrap the forever deadwood completely in new wood to totally isolate it from the rest of the tree. In the tree world, we call this compartmentalization. Simply put, it's the tree trying to isolate decay, diseases or insects … keeping them from transferring to healthy parts of the tree.”
July 2023 I was invited to participate in an exhibit that was titled “The Understory”. I knew immediately I would use this nurse stump and her wound wood as my inspiration. Recycled cardboard was the obvious choice for constructing the stump; it connects the dots between the primary resource that we have relied on for years (trees) in meeting the demands for paper products. Trying to keep pace with our demands for the earth's resources has led innovations to emerge, raising the awareness that recycled paper products are a priority for our future.
Other recycled papers still ultimately are resourced from trees. I wanted to memorialize a mighty tree that once stood in the forest, while also commenting on how our renewed dependency with this natural resource has once again increased the demand through our online shopping practices. The printed word becomes part of the story. As we gleefully open our doors to boxed products, the advertising industry has quickly adapted to use the cardboard surface for advertising.
Nurse Logs: Healers of the Forest, by Allie Wisniewski, American Forests, July 12, 2017