Community Art Installation, “TREES”

The Center for Creative Photography (CCP) in collaboration with the Laboratory for Tree-Ring Research (LTRR) invited digital submissions of images or texts that respond to the question: what stories, images, or ideas do trees inspire for you? Selected submissions were printed and are displayed together at the Bryant Bannister Tree-Ring Building from January 31, 2022 to July 22, 2022.

This community art project is on display in conjunction with the exhibition trees stir in their leaves, in CCP’s Alice Chaiten Baker Interdisciplinary Gallery. 

You can view this community art project at the Laboratory for Tree-Ring Research on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9am - 5pm.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION Trees Stir In Their Leaves:

“To find the wealth of information trees have to share,” writes paleoclimatologist Dr. Valerie Trouet in Tree Story, “we must simply learn how to look.”

From January 22 – July 22, 2022, the Center for Creative Photography (CCP) and the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research (LTRR) will stage installations together that follow historical, cultural, and scientific narratives inspired by trees.

With more than 75 images and objects assembled from CCP and LTRR’s collections, trees stir in their leaves creates a multilayered experience with photography and dendrochronology (the study of annual rings in trees) in CCP’s Alice Chaiten Baker Interdisciplinary Gallery. Learn how visual information and analyses are crucial to tree-ring research and environmental advocacy. Explore trees as a point of departure from which artists and scientists consider nature, place, progress, migration, connectivity, and catastrophe. The installation includes work by such CCP collection artists as Ansel Adams, Lola Álvarez Bravo, Barbara Crane, Kozo Miyoshi, Doug and Mike Starn, Aaron Siskind, Rosalind Solomon, John Yang and more.

Founded as the first of its kind in 1937 at the University of Arizona, LTRR comprises an interdisciplinary research lab, teaching institute, and wood sample archive. At LTRR, the collaboration continues with a community art installation that responds to the prompt: what stories, images or ideas do trees inspire for you? Also at LTRR, trace the histories of dendrochronology; experience the interactive tree-stump and large redwood section exhibit; join tours of the facilities; and view films about lab research on trees.

To complement the installations, the Center’s mobile app, CCP Interactive, offers a guided tour of campus trees along the walk between CCP and LTRR. Designed by the University of Arizona Campus Arboretum, the mobile tour provides a lived experience of the aesthetic, scientific, and cultural connections between people and trees. The tour is also available in printed and mobile formats through the Campus Arboretum website here.