Visually, trees amaze me as unpredictable organic grids that tower over the houses we construct. When I walk, I spend nearly half of my time looking up at the crowns of the trees while doing my best to imagine the intricate web of roots and fungi below ground. I’ve been taking photographs from my walks around Wilmette and during my travels to use as compositions for paintings in my studio. In the same way that I’ve borrowed from nature for composition, I also borrowed the idea of creating a physical network from the connections that trees form with one another and a variety of species. Trees and plants would not be able to live without tapping into the mycorrhizal network that exists underground–sharing nutrients, water, and information. Humans have applied the notion that everything in nature is competing constantly for more food, water, and space, but one of the integral research questions that Suzanne Simard poses is: “Are forests structured mainly by competition, or is cooperation as or even more important?” Simard argues that cooperation is imperative to the health of the forest. In agreement, Sheldrake writes: “Without this fungal web my tree would not exist. Without similar fungal webs no plant would exist anywhere. All life on land, including my own, depend[s] on these networks.”

Humans have a habit of considering themselves other than nature and that any other non-human way of thinking is unintelligent. I would argue, in agreement with Simard and Sheldrake, that we have underestimated mycorrhizal networks and doubted their complexity. Dendritic structures permeate all scales and forms of life, and so it visually represents the exact kind of connections and investigations I was hoping to inspire in my artist community. I couldn’t have been more impressed with the various forms that the artist community created to be a part of the Artist Quilt.