Wanted: Tree or trees for environmental art

A tree may grow in Brooklyn, but a tree will hang in Burlington.

Or trees.

Artist Nancy Winship Milliken of Charlotte and her team of co-designers have won a commission from Burlington’s Main Street Project to hang a tree, or several trees, over a 60-foot section of sidewalk on the north side of Main Street, a block west of Church Street.

If you have been in the Queen City in the past few months, you almost certainly have encountered construction on Main Street. About 18 months of work is going into replacing underground infrastructure and then dressing up the street with public art installations.

For several months now, there has been migrating digging in Burlington as out-of-date water pipes, wastewater pipes and such are replaced or repaired. Detours have been pervasive as the work has progressed block by block.

After this necessary work is finished, an aesthetic phase of the project will follow. This is where Milliken and her team come in. They are one of four groups of artists that have won commissions for public art installations. When you think art in relation to this project, you should imagine fun, rather than staid or sedate.

The original vision of Milliken et al was to hang a 35-foot tree over the sidewalk, but they have begun to broaden their vision as a couple months of searching and social media inquiries have not turned up a suitable tree. If the proper candidate is not found they may hang several trees.

“The materials dictate the pieces,” said Milliken, who, as an environmental artist, is well versed in modifying her inspiration to fit what the environment provides. “It’s really listening to the community and what’s out there in the landscape.”

Her work can be found outside, celebrating the natural world and incorporating objects found there. In 2022, four of her pieces were installed on the lawns of Shelburne Museum as part of its 75th anniversary. One of those pieces featured raw wool suspended from a large frame.

Initially, Milliken’s group was searching for a 35-foot-tall white oak, cedar or black locust, but they do not want a tree to be pushed down for this project. They are searching for a tree that has already blown down with roots intact, or a tree that is planned to be taken down for development.

“We’re trying to be super conscious of our relationship to trees,” Milliken said.

So, now her team is searching for several trees, or even limbs, that are at least 5 inches in diameter. They still need for the donated trees or large limbs to be white oak, cedar or black locust, and not rotten. These species of trees will last the longest.

Milliken said that early in the design process they had considered using driftwood, partly because that would not involve taking a live tree. That idea was abandoned when they realized it wouldn’t last the many years the installation is intended to stand.

Whether it is one tree or several, they will be suspended horizontally from an archway, high enough that people will walk under them.

The installation will include 60 feet of pollinator garden installed on both sides of the sidewalk. Part of Milliken’s team is Mike and Tawnya Kiernan of Bee the Change in Weybridge. It is Bee the Change’s mission to plant pollinator habitat in every Vermont town, hoping to tell the story of pollinators and their importance.

The Milliken’s tree, or trees, will tell the story of how trees contribute to the riparian ecosystem of healthy forests and how necessary they are to keeping the lake clean and healthy.

Milliken’s project is just one of four commissioned by Burlington City Arts as part of the Main Street Project, which also is known as Great Streets. Besides just making necessary repairs and replacements to the underground infrastructure, Burlington is making changes and improvements above ground.

Some of those changes involve optimizing the roadway by switching from diagonal to parallel parking, so there can be wider sidewalks with more appropriately sized trees to help with storm water management and a protected bike lane. Each of the intersections on Main Street are planned to have outdoor seating, bike parking, views of the lake or public art.

“The Great Streets plan is for long-term sustainability and transforming our streets into dynamic public spaces, while ensuring that renovations and improvements can be responsibly maintained for decades to come,” according to the Great Street Main Street Project website. “The Main Street concept is about balancing all of the uses of our public right of way.”

Burlington has allocated $500,000 for the public art piece of the project to four artists, and Milliken’s project won the lion’s share of that. Of the other three other artists commissioned by the Main Street Project, two are from Vermont and one is from California, said Colin Storrs of the Burlington City Arts or BCA. All four arts installations will be on Main Street.

Storrs said the four arts groups were determined by a public review committee during the fall of 2022 and spring of 2023. The art should be installed beginning next summer and finished in the spring of 2026.

Noa Younse, with Pixel Patch Creative of Richmond, will install several multi-colored aluminum blocks that are taller than a person and “represent the disparate parts of the community coming together as a whole,” said Storrs.

The blocks will have an internal light that changes as it “reacts to a data set,” Storrs said. What the data set will be is yet to be determined and difficult to explain, but it could be that the internal light reacts to how many people are tweeting about Burlington or how weather is changing.

Lydia Kern of Burlington’s piece will include an approximately 11×9-foot archway of poured colored resin that will incorporate dried local flowers. Light will pass through the archway casting colors on the pavement.

Wowhaus of California had three snails made of marble in Barre this past summer. Storrs said the snails are about 4 feet high and can be sat upon. The concrete sidewalk at this installation will be poured with dark aggregate to represent the snails’ trails.

“It will be sort of a nice, family-friendly, whimsical piece,” Storrs said, a description that could apply to all four of these pieces.

Storrs believes that public art is an important factor in keeping downtown Burlington a vital, lively community. And even more of a tourist destination.

“Public art is integral in making Burlington an exciting place for people to visit,” he said.

So, if you’ve got a white oak, cedar or black locust that’s 2 feet in diameter — or at least 5 inches in diameter — that has already been felled or is scheduled to be, Milliken would love to hear from you.

It could become a part of something you could point to for years to come. After all, they’re still crowing about a New York borough with a tree growing in it.