Over the course of a few email chains we had the pleasure of talking to Katie Holten, artist, activist and bestselling author of The Language of Trees, which was released in paperback in September 2024. We explore using art as a vessel for sparking conversations and what trees can teach us about living life.
Grace Cummins: Can you introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your journey? Katie Holten: I grew up in Longford, in the middle of Ireland, in the 1980s. I’ve always felt a kinship with animals and plants, feeling more comfortable with non-humans than with people. I don’t know if that’s because of all that magic alone time outdoors when I was little, or if I would be the same if I’d grown up in a city. I think those early years of a child’s life are precious. It's so important for us to see, touch, and feel how beautiful and alive the world is. From my parents, I received a wonderful combination of love for the natural world and a fascination with our man-made world of maths, numbers and trying to understand how the world works through symbols and language. My mum is a gardener and floral artist. Her love of plants filled our home, and still does! My dad tried to share his love and innate knowledge of mathematics with me, but all I remember is loving very much how the pencil made marks on the paper. At school, a teacher locked me into a classroom during lunch break and asked me to draw the history lesson on the blackboard. Right then, my world split when I discovered drawing as a powerful tool for communicating. I was good at it, and I went to art college. Working with people from different fields has always been important for me, so I’ve always worked collaboratively. I’m fascinated with how we live together with each other, alone, in community, and nested within ecosystems. GC: How did your book, The Language of Trees, come about? KH: Trees have always helped me. I find solace in trees. I moved to New York City in 2004 on a Fulbright Scholarship to research our relationship with the natural world in the city. I was living in the East Village and explored the city through walking. Although there are some community gardens and parks, I understood viscerally why it’s called a concrete jungle. I was drawn to the street trees, so I started drawing them. Ten years later, I realised those drawings could be used to replace the letters of the alphabet, and I made my first Tree Alphabet. I used the font to make a book called About Trees, published by Broken Dimanche Press in Berlin in September 2015. It was a way to celebrate my 40th birthday. In my lifetime, we have seen Earth’s planetary systems change due to our actions. This is beyond comprehension. I wanted to make a special book to share the beauty and joy that I see in the world, while also acknowledging the deeper, darker aspects of our relationship with each other and the world. There has always been a deep connection between books and trees. What exactly is a book? With roots in Old English, boc refers to any piece of writing but is also identical to the word for 'beech tree.” I’ve always been enchanted that our language, writing and books have evolved in relationship with plants and trees. I wanted the book to act like a cabinet of curiosity, offering a way to fall in love with the world. Almost ten years later, I was approached by an editor at Tin House in Portland, Oregon, who invited me to publish About Trees in a new edition. I had the opportunity to expand it and include new voices, stories and drawings. So, The Language of Trees has been a journey over decades, but the story is still being written. GC: Your book looks at the relationship we as humans have with the natural habitat around us; how would you describe this current relationship we have? KH: Broken. Unfortunately, many people’s relationship with the natural habitat around them seems to be broken. I have met people who are disconnected, they have no sense of the vitality of the living world, they don’t realise that trees are actually alive, that there is soil under the streets and buildings, that we’re all spinning on a planet in outer space. People are scrambling, doing their best to get by, stressed, exhausted, numb from the news, horrified by wars, consumed by paying the bills and absorbed by screens and social media. The COVID lockdowns offered an opportunity for many to slow down and discover the living world around them. Sales of seeds and gardening supplies went through the roof. People started gardening, walking, birdwatching, noticing trees and the non-human companions that share our lives. That’s why The Language of Trees came to be – my editor told me later that during lockdown she noticed trees for the first time, and they saved her, so she wanted to make a beautiful book about trees to share the love. GC: The Language of Trees intertwines two creative disciplines, writing and drawing. Did your vision for this project always involve both, and why? KH: Yes. The moment I realised that I could replace all the letters of the alphabet with trees, I knew instantly that I had to use the Tree font to make a book. Drawing out each letter, tree by tree, is a simple gesture that, I hope, offers a celebration of the history and physicality of language as well as the power of storytelling. From the beginning I knew the book had to be super beautiful and share stories from the deep well of knowledge about humans and our intertwined relationship with trees. GC: What do you believe trees teach us about life? KH: Everything! Trees teach us everything about life. There is no life without trees. Trees provide our oxygen. Trees breathe out – we breathe in. Trees have been around much longer than we have. If we slow down, into what I call Tree Time, we can learn what living on this planet is. Trees are alive. Trees live in community, they share resources. Trees nurture their young and take care of the sick. GC: Why did you originally create the Tree Alphabet, what was your hope for readers when they saw it and read in this way? KH: I hope it doesn’t sound corny, but I made the Tree Alphabet because I was compelled to by a vision. It appeared to me. The Tree Alphabet seemed so simple and pure — like it already existed — I just had to draw it into being. Also, I think a part of me made it because I was scared, and angry, and frustrated. Why aren’t we screaming in the streets calling for climate action? Why is no one doing anything? For decades, we’ve known about the science of what is happening due to burning fossil fuels. The 2024 State of the Climate Report was just released. It states that many of Earth’s ‘vital signs’ have hit record extremes, indicating that ‘the future of humanity hangs in the balance’. More and more scientists are now looking into the possibility of societal collapse. Yet I don’t see a single story about it in my newsfeed – nothing on the main pages of any newspapers. It was exactly ten years ago when the Tree Alphabet started seeding itself in my brain. I naively thought that slowing down the reader and translating our letters and words into trees would offer a simple way to transcend politics and all the rage. It was an invitation to share inter-species storytelling and allow the natural world into our thinking. Now, I call it Forest Thinking. GC: Your work has merged many topics over the years, from activism and ecology to language and history. How important is it for you to explore these matters through your art? KH: We all want to make the world better. We all want to leave the world better than we found it. We all want to be better. I live through sharing a love of this beautiful, precious planet. GC: ‘Speaking’ through art: is this the way forward to a brighter future for the planet? KH: Art is one way we can move forward. But we all have different loves and skills. We need to use anything and everything we can in this fight. It’s not hyperbole to say this is the fight of our lives. We are in a climate and biodiversity emergency. These terms have become meaningless, as they’ve been thrown around for years now, and people have become numb to what they represent. We – humans, with our capitalist extractive systems – have broken many planetary boundaries and this is pushing the Earth into uncharted territory. Each of us can make a difference. We all need to use our voice. Artists, writers and musicians must use the tools available to us as storytellers. Amitav Ghosh wrote about this in The Great Derangement. We need a collective reimagining of our relationship with the world, and this involves decentering human narratives and recentering stories of the land and non-humans. GC: If you could tell the whole world something, what would you say? KH: Love Earth. We are a species motivated by love. Earth is our only home, and the most beautiful place in the entire universe. If we can slow down and remember this – if we can fall in love with the world – then we will do anything to save and protect it. My own love for the Earth brought me to the Rights of Nature movement. I hope the book helps share this message. When we come together in love, we are powerful. We can change the world. Another world is possible. But we need to act fast. That’s one of the ironies of our situation: we need to slow down our human capitalist extractivist system and simultaneously speed up our response. Only love can motivate us to go beyond what we think we’re capable of.Katie Holten is an artist, activist and bestselling author. In 2003, she represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale. She has had solo exhibitions at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Nevada Museum of Art, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, and Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane. Her work investigates the entangled relationships between humans and the natural world. She has created Tree Alphabets, a Stone Alphabet, and a Wildflower Alphabet to share the joy she finds in her love of the more-than-human world. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Irish Times, The Washington Post, Artforum, and frieze. She is a visiting lecturer at the New School of the Anthropocene. If she could be a tree, she would be an Oak. The language of Tree’s ( £16.99, Elliott & Thomson) can be found here.
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