Liz Mitchell

I grew up in a wooded area in NJ, USA. Even where I live now I am still surrounded by trees. I have been spending time drawing and painting their beautiful forms. I also make books using bark for their covers. Sometimes a drawing will become a print.

Observation books use bark as their covers with collaged and accordion folded pages inside. Often, rusted objects are used as clasps to hold the books closed. Many times the books are held in custom made boxes.

In a recent commission I was asked to create a print honoring the 50th anniversary of Raritan Valley Community College in North Branch, NJ. I began to think about the project by imagining who or what had witnessed the progress of the school from the beginning. Was there something still on the property that was there when the school was first built? The trees were there, and like the witness trees at Gettysburg, they were the survivors through time.

I was given a tour of the college property and found two massive and majestic grandparent oaks in a small grove in the part of the campus where the college began. I’m guessing that these trees are between 200 and 300 years old.

I completed drawings of several of the trees and used these drawing to make a printing plate. I completed an edition of twenty. The first four of the edition were used in gratitude to those that were honored at the anniversary event of the college.

I continue to be influenced by trees in my work, first getting to know their angles and ruddiness through the drawing process, then transfer the form and structure onto the printing plate. Artist books are made using bark that I find in the wooded area behind my house or in my wood pile.