Global Tree Project

The Global Tree Project is an international art initiative from artist Shinji Turner-Yamamoto that seeks to open and affirm connections between audiences and the natural world. Working with identifiable imagery the artist encourages audiences to encounter aspects of nature and therein to discover commonality and connection. Site-specific installations, sculpture, and paintings in venues throughout the world reopen our connection with nature, to be whole in a society integrated in environmentalism with a new vision through it. The projects explore a poetic reunion with nature, making visible bonds and similarities between plant life and humanity, emphasizing ecological wisdom and the interconnectedness of all life. They illuminate our mutual destiny and the precarious beauty of this relationship. The selected projects documented in the Global Tree Project transport viewers to a ruined folly on a cliff overlooking the Celtic Sea, to the Sutra Hall of the 8th century Kiyomizu Temple, a garden in New Delhi, and on to the Mongolian Gobi Desert, and abandoned architectural landmarks in the American Midwest. Included are essays by Patricia J. Graham, Justine Ludwig, and the artist.