The Chosen One

Synchronicity leads Milliken to the right tree

Charlotte environmental artist Nancy Winship Milliken searched for months for just the right tree to hang in Burlington for an arts installation as her part of the Main Street Project.

Several times, while looking far and near in both traditional and social media for a tree to meet her creative needs, Milliken thought she had found the tree that would fit the bill perfectly.

But every time with each there was some hassle that meant it wouldn’t work for her project. (An earlier story about Milliken’s project ran in this newspaper.)

Just a couple of weeks ago it looked like she’d finally hooked up with the tree that met her very specific needs. Milliken and her design team wanted a 35-foot-tall white oak, cedar or black locust. With the roots intact.

But equally important: The tree could not have come to its demise for the art project. It had to have been already doomed. When the purpose of your art is to herald the importance of trees, it kind of contradicts your message to kill one in the making of your point.

As an environmental artist committed to art celebrating the natural world and speaking to our vital relationship to it, Milliken wanted a tree that had blown down or was scheduled to be taken down already, that she and her team could use for their art installation as part of Burlington’s Main Street Project.

A couple of weeks ago, Milliken and her team were making final plans to dig up a tree at St. Michaels that needs to come down. At the antepenultimate minute, they discovered there was fiber optic cable running through the roots of the tree. St. Mike’s will have to find another way to take that tree down.

Milliken’s project is one of four that won commissions from Burlington City Arts as part of the city’s revitalization of Main Street. Besides repairing and replacing old pipes and other underground infrastructure, the Main Street Project is making changes above ground to make Burlington more dynamic, livable and attractive to tourists.

The sidewalk along Main Street downtown is being widened to make it more pedestrian- and bike-friendly and safe.

A week or so ago, Milliken learned of a tree that needed to come down. And it was in Charlotte.

And, it was just three doors down from her home and studio on Greenbush.

Lydia Clemmons at the Clemmons Family Farm had a tree that needed to be taken down — a black locust, Milliken’s first choice of the three tree species that would work for her project.

Black locusts are thought of as invasives in this part of the country, said Greg Ranallo, owner of Teacher’s Tree Service, which was the majority of the group working on gently bringing the tree down on Wednesday, March 26.

Generally, if you see a stand of black locusts, you can assume that they were planted by farmers some generations ago to supply fence posts. Black locust is a hard wood that is difficult to get lit, but once it’s going, will burn for hours in a woodstove.

It’s the kind of wood that will last for years, hanging horizontally overhead a section of sidewalk in Burlington, which is exactly what Milliken and her team will be working on for much of the next year, to end up with at least 35 feet of tree with much of the limbs and roots intact, a testament to the importance and beauty of nature.

The tree needs to be prepared. For example, all of the bark will be coming off. Bark is notorious for serving as housing for parasites and such.

Watching as an excavator worked on the tree, Clemmons said the black locust was one of several that had already been growing, “an adolescent,” when her family moved to the farm in the early 1960s. (More about the Clemmons Family Farm at clemmonsfamilyfarm.org.)

“I grew up with that tree,” Clemmons said.

As bitter as seeing it go must be, there must also be some sweet in seeing the tree go to Milliken’s project. It seems a supreme example of serendipity that, when Clemmons Family Farm first started its artist in residence program on the property several years ago, Milliken was the first artist to set up shop in the Big Barn.

She worked on her art in the Big Barn, as it is known on the farm, until she had built her own studio at her home. Just three houses up the road.