Early March of 2025, after a 6-hour drive from southern Nevada, I made it to Utah, up to the alpine terrain of Fishlake National Forest, and finally to Pando. This is the photo I took of the first time being in the middle of Pando, and touching the bark of one of Pando’s thousands of clones. It was a very silent time in Fishlake National Forest, when snow was still on the ground, the lake was still frozen, many animals were still hibernating or haven’t returned from the places they migrated to, and Pando was still dormant (or so I thought). That early March day I visited was very sunny and windy, and it gave me a chance to see Pando up close and walk along, beside and around Pando’s several clones of different ages, heights, and all swaying with the mid afternoon breeze - clonal trunks, branches and the twigs bare of the leaves well known for the sound made from their rustling. But despite Pando being bare of leaves, sound was still being emitted from the rustling of twigs (which I made note of). In the cloudless blue sky, I felt struck by the bright light color of Pando’s trunks, and while I was walking, I was reflecting on one of the facts I read about Quaking Aspen trunks which I thought was quite marvelous: that the tree bark can photosynthesize, which is a unique ability that Aspens have evolved as a survival mechanism. That the powdery white surfaces of Pando’s bark is actively producing energy in this dead of winter while other trees are inactive was a source of wonder. Recently I had also come across texts on scientists who are doing tests to determine if plants possess consciousness in the manner that we humans understand it, and so that led me to wonder if Pando was somehow having an “awareness” of my presence on that afternoon. And so with all those thoughts going through my mind, I stopped by one of Pando’s clones, removed the glove from my left hand, and placed my hand on the trunk of one of Pando’s clones. I remained still and silent.

“Touch is the sensory mode which integrates our experiences of the world and of ourselves…my body remembers who I am and how I am located in the world. My body is truly the navel of the world, not in the sense of the viewing point of the central perspective, but as the very locus of reference, memory, imagination, and integration.”

~ Juhani Pallasmaa, from his 2012 book “The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses”

Touching Pando was establishing a connection, acknowledging, giving gratitude, and also asking for permission. This quote from Pallasmaa’s book best articulated for me how this notion of touch ties together my intentions for connecting with Pando, my relationship to the landscapes that are referenced in the artwork I’ve been making (and will be making), and the processes involved in making my art. Not exactly knowing yet what I will learn about Pando during the upcoming year-long residency, and what form my residency project will be, I felt that I needed this still and silent moment to reflect on the upcoming year to work on this project - to be like a ceremony to launch the project. Touching became a gesture and establishment of a promise to put faith and trust in this connection with Pando.

And so the residency journey began.

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Early spring of 2025 was when I received the news of my invitation to be an artist-in-residence with Friends of Pando. Pictured here is a photo I took of a wall from Red Rock Canyon’s visitor center in Nevada, around the same week that I received news of my upcoming artist residency. Red Rock Canyon is a nature preserve that consists of almost 200,000 acres of the Mojave Desert that is filled with a mixture of desert dwelling wildlife, plant life and geologic features. I took this photo of the wall because it had the quote attributed to the Scottish-born American naturalist and author John Muir: “When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” When I tried to look up when Muir wrote it, I found that it is a paraphrasing of his original quote that was taken from his 1911 book “My First Summer in the Sierra,” which goes:

“When we try to pick out anything by itself in nature, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.”

I felt that it was a sign of what the upcoming 1-year residency was going to be like: that it was going to be a year-long journey of reflection, observation, research, studio work -all about finding how Pando is connected to this very place where I took this photo, to the other places past and future, near and far, how Pando is connected to me, to us a a society and the rest of the word.

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