Notes for “I Heart Eau Claire Trees”

 

Some of the artworks GG has found date to the 1800’s with trees from the Eau Claire area along with current artwork on canvas and prints and of course our Christmas Tree!

 

Galaudet Gallery is always open for appointments which can be made by calling us at 715-513-9994 or emailing us at galaudetgallery@gmail.com.  GG understands that appointments may be made within a block of time and that there is always the possibility that an appointment might need to be rescheduled or missed!

 

The Phoenix Park Balloon Tree is a lilac tree that hold yellows blossoms that puff out looking like yellow ballons before opening into their bloom.  There have been many years that the balloon part of the blossom does not take place since for that balloon to puff out there needs to be unseasonably warm and humid air and not very cold evenings for the balloon to last more than a hot humid day can create.  There is a second balloon tree in Wilson Park that is much younger and has yet to create the balloons but we are always looking for it!

 

Other trees that will be included in this exhibit are the Seaver Street Kissing Tree, The Owen Park Pom Pom Tree, The Carson Park Dreaming Trees, The Chippewa River Cottonwoods (a heart as every leaf!), The Wilson Park Raindrop Evergreen, The Farwell Street Wishing Tree, The East Hill Rising Moon Trees, The Lady Alice Apple Tree, Lake Wissota Moon and Trees and others along with historic drawings of Eau Claire trees and poems found inside some of these trees.

 

GG continues its multi-year look at symbolic and ever joyful hearts with artworks curated for aesthetic pleasures, gifting ideas and fun.

 

The sibling gallerists Mike Milewski and Vicki Milewski are becoming known for seeing the changes happening in our 21st Century culture and then amplifying those changes with their well-known mixings of media and materials.  Their exhibit “Shakers and Makers” was hosted by many institutions because of their thoughtful research into both the mystical elements of Shaker “Gift Drawings” and their own published writings about redefining folk art and self-taught artists in new ways which includes them in art history and recognizes their influence.  21st Century changes in healing were seen in GG’s award winning 4-year art series “My Medicine” showing artworks’ medicinal qualities being used as healing agents.  GG’s “Landscape Rebels” exhibit was both a traditional landscape art show in the galleries while also showing land art installations in different Midwest locations.   And GG’s Beauty in Glass Tiffany Replica exhibit is still touring after over 10 years of locations, sales and new additions and will be coming back to Eau Claire with new pieces soon.  These and other exhibits around the world, most recently in Berlin, have won these sibling gallerists accolades, awards and invitations to speak about 21st Century Art, Exhibition Planning, The Art of Collecting Art and How Artists Should Curate Their Own Art and other such topics that both Mike and Vicki like to make meaningful, frolicking and fun.

​

As an artist Vicki Milewski has worked with trees from the beginning, championing trees and often helping to save trees, forests and communities of trees with her latest work in the Black Hills National Forest when she worked with forest rangers painting her dreaming tree symbols onto pine beetle suffering trees as a way to trap the beetles inside the trees so they could not spread and as a glow in the dark reminder to travelers to not transport wood anywhere.  Vicki began recording her experiences with trees through drawings, poetry, songs, music and experimental films capturing scenes and inscriptions on trees much like an Epigraphic Survey [1] like the ones done in the pyramids of Luxor, Egypt  to both copy and publish all the historical texts in the Nile Valley—Vicki seeks to copy and publish the historical texts and moments of trees.  This unimaginably ambitious program of field research has led Vicki to sit with trees for years learning their seasons and shapes

 

As Vicki’s fellow artist T Oa believes, “All living things store genetic information using the same molecules—DNA and RNA.  Written in this genetic code is compelling evidence of the shared ancestry of all living things.  Many mystical peoples feel that even the seemingly inorganic things share in this ancestry.”

 

And as Walt Whitman wrote in his poem “Song of the Redwood”

O the great patient rugged joys

my soul’s strong joys unwrecked by man

For I know I hear the soul befitting me

I too have consciousness

I too have identity

 

Ever a tree hugger, Vicki has had a lifetime of trees as friends but moments when her breath is taken away by an experience shared with a tree.  The fluttering of blossoms, the hundreds year old and hundreds of feet high, the fire lit tips of branches when covered in snow.  These are some of the experiences which have created these artworks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1] In 1924, an Egyptologist, an artist, and a photographer—the staff of the University of Chicago’s new Epigraphic Survey— began the task of recording the scenes and inscriptions carved on the walls of the enormous, 3,000-year-old temple of Pharaoh Ramesses III at Medinet Habu near Luxor, Egypt. It was the culmination of a long-standing dream of James Henry Breasted, the first American Egyptologist and founder of ISAC (then the Oriental Institute), to both copy and publish all the historical texts in the Nile Valley. The Epigraphic Survey was established to undertake this unimaginably ambitious program of field research.