To Understand A Tree" Book

To Understand a Tree: A new book by Gina Siepel links biological understandings of forest interconnection, environmental philosophy, queer ecology, and Indigenous teachings about human-nature relationships, challenging an often-assumed binary between living trees and dead wood.  

These studies, along with many hours spent in the forest observing a 100-year-old red oak tree and its surrounding ecosystem, encourage a shift in the consideration of the tree as a subject rather than simply an object, fundamentally affecting ideas of woodworking practice and ecological responsibility.

To Understand a Tree functions as a small-scale way of exploring big questions about the place of humans in the environment, the scale and speed at which we consume natural resources, and which organisms are included or excluded in a definition of “community.” 

Published by the Museum for Art in Wood with major support from the Fleur Bresler Publication Fund, supported by Sid and Phyllis Bresler.  

The exhibition program at the Museum for Art in Wood is generously supported by Cambium Circle Members of the Museum for Art in Wood, Bresler Foundation, Klorfine Foundation, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Philadelphia Cultural Fund, William Penn Foundation, and Windgate Foundation.

In-kind support for the exhibition was provided by Boomerang, Inc.

Gina Siepel (she/they) is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, and woodworker.  Their artistic practice reflects an engagement with place, history, queer experience, and ecology, and their work integrates conceptual concerns and craftsmanship with a focus on wood as a natural and cultural material. Gina’s objects, installations, drawings, videos, and other works link aesthetic and materially based modes of artistic production to other forms of inquiry, including collaboration, social engagement, site-based exploration, and research. 

Gina’s works have been shown in museums and galleries nationally, including the Colby Museum, the DeCordova Museum, the Museum for Art in Wood, Vox Populi Gallery, the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, and Amherst College. Gina holds a BFA from the School of Art + Design at SUNY Purchase and an MFA from the Maine College of Art, and has taught at Amherst College, Mount Holyoke College, and currently teaches in the Massachusetts College of Art and Design MFA program. Gina is also currently a MacLeish Field Station Artist-in-Residence at Smith College and a 2023 recipient of a Teaching Artist Cohort Grant from the Center for Craft. She is enrolled in the Field Naturalist Certification Program at Mass Audubon and is a member of the Greenfield Tree Committee, a volunteer urban forestry organization in Greenfield, Massachusetts.