Richard Reames creates arborsculptures, bending, grafting and pruning trees.
Courtesy Richard Reames
Southern Oregon artist Richard Reames works in an unusual medium: trees. He creates arborsculptures — bending, grafting and pruning trees to form creative shapes, patterns and objects. His artistic works often take years to complete. Reames has written books on arborsculpture, and was recently profiled on Oregon Art Beat. He’s holding a public showing of his arboretum near Williams, Oregon on Saturday, April 23. We talk with Reames about his chosen medium and explore the nature of his art.
The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer:
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Richard Reames sculpts trees in southern Oregon. I don’t mean that he sculpts with pieces of wood. He bends and grafts and prunes living trees into novel three-dimensional shapes like hearts and knots and peace signs, even chairs and a boat. He calls himself an arbor sculptor. Reams was recently profiled on Oregon Art Beat. He’s holding a public showing of his arboretum outside of Williams in Josephine County tomorrow. Richard Reames, welcome to TOL.
Richard Reames: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Miller: How did you become a sculptor of trees?
Reames: Well, when I was facing fatherhood about 30 years ago, I asked the universe, ‘Hey, what’s gonna be my profession?’ And when I thought that, I remembered the trees of Axel Erlandson. Erlandson had a roadside attraction in central California’s Scotts Valley. He charged people to come look at his trees, and he was the master.
Miller: I gotta say your phrase ‘facing fatherhood’, it makes parenthood seem like a terminal illness. But it’s certainly a life changing event. So what exactly was it that that you latched on to, that you remembered about what this man had done with trees?
Reames: Well, I grew up about 10 miles from where his attraction was. It was called the Tree Circus. And I remembered when they moved his trees, they were sold to a garden in Gilroy. And they were moved, and there were a lot of articles in the paper with pictures of the trees. And of course I remembered the Tree Circus from being a kid. So that stimulated my memory, and I thought, wow, nobody has picked up this art form, and I certainly don’t want it to die. It seems really interesting. And so I put my hand to it.
Miller: How is tree sculpting similar to or different from other arts or practices like bonsai or espaliering a fruit tree against a wall?
Reames: Sure. Espalier is one-dimensional, typically for fruit. Up against the wall, I just got straight branches coming out. Now if you take those branches and made it into a three-dimensional shape, well you could copy anything: you could do signs or letters or spirals, and then use grafting. Of course espalier does not use any kind of grafting. You can use grafting to bring two parts of a tree together, or two different trees together.
Miller: How do you do that? I mean, how do you actually graft a tree to itself?
Reames: Oh, it’s actually the easiest kind of grafting there is. It’s called approach grafting. And because nothing has severed, you’ve only removed a little bark from each piece where they touch, and then it’s held immobile for a year or two. And then the new growth creates a solid ring of growth around the two parts.
Miller: And then after a year or two, it just holds itself together and it grows touching itself into a loop or whatever.
Reames: Right, right.
Miller: You’ve described what you do as a long conversation with a tree ‒ that you say something, and the tree says something back. I’m interested in both sides of that conversation. So first of all, how do trees give you messages?
Reames: When I shake the tree, I have an idea. Let’s say I start with an idea. I want it to be a chair, and maybe I planted several saplings to give me the legs and the arms. But then something happens. Maybe the front part of the chair dies or one piece dies. So I prune it back to symmetry. And in that way the tree has said ‘no, I’m not going to grow like that’. And I’ll say, ‘okay then, how about like this?’
Miller: Is it easy to misinterpret what a tree “wants” to do? I guess I put “wants” in quotes or is “going” to do?
Reames: Yes, it is. In fact, maybe I get a 25% success rate. Earlandson had a 50% success rate in what he intended to do and what actually happened.
Miller: Are there also though happy surprises?
Reames: Oh sure.
Miller: So what are the tools that you have? You mentioned grafting. What else do you do to bend and move and shape trees into the shapes that you intend for them?
Reames: Sure. The framing is important, creating a structure that you can bend the young saplings to. And once they’re held for a season they’ll take that shape. The new growth will cast that form of whatever you bent it too.
Miller: How do you think about time as a sculptor of trees?
Reames: It’s always going by so fast. When you have a whole bunch of trees growing like this, It’s actually hard to keep up with them. It’s not like I’m waiting around for the trees to do things. It’s all I can do to keep up with them.
Miller: You know, I have to say, I was expecting almost the exact opposite answer. Because I would have thought that, not that you were sitting somewhere waiting for two years for a tree to do something, but that the experience of any individual tree growing and slowly moving and taking solid form you’re hoping for it, that each one of those things would actually take a long time. But you’re saying it feels like the opposite.
Reames: Right. A lot of people say, ‘oh, you must have a lot of patience’. And I say ‘no, it’s actually the opposite’. So one thing that people don’t realize is that a coppiced tree, like a hybrid poplar – it’s a very fast growing tree – if it’s coppiced, which means just removing the larger tree at the ground level, the next year’s sprouts grow really fast. They can grow 10 ft in just a matter of four months. And so during the growing season on hybrid poplar, I have to be out there almost every day to bend the saplings into the shape I want them.
Miller: Is there a finishing point for these living works of art?
Reames: Only when they die.
Miller: Until then, they keep going? It’s not like, say, for a chair, it gets to a certain point, and the idea is to chop it off at the bottom and put it inside? You’d rather that they live and grow and expand it until they actually die.
Reames: Originally, I was only going for living things. But I see that there’s an advantage to, for example, a chair to growing it into a perfect size and then harvesting it.
Miller: What is the commercial reality in terms of the work you do? Is there a market for a living work of art?
Reames: No, not really.
Miller: Is that one of the benefits of this? Or is it a drawback?
Reames: Oh, gee, that’s hard to say. I believe I’m a nonprofit, but not intentionally. [chuckling]
Miller: Is there any shape that you long to do but can’t?
Reames: That’s a hard question. I can’t say that there’s nothing I can’t try to do, within the bounds of botany and horticulture and what the trees have. For example, there’s 100,000 different kinds of trees on our planet here. And I’ve worked with 14. So I’m only scratching the surface of what could be done. But to get to your question, I wish I could work with banyan trees and aerial roots, but I don’t live in the tropics or the subtropics. So that’s kind of out of the question for me.
Miller: How many trees are you working on right now?
Reames: Oh, I have about 30 different sculptures in my garden.
Miller: Well, Richard Reames, thanks so much for joining us.
Reames: Thank you for having me. Miller: Richard Reames is an arbor sculptor who was recently profiled on OPB’s Oregon Art Beat. He’s holding a public showing of his arboretum tomorrow. It is outside of Williams, in Josephine County.
Contact “Think Out Loud®”
If you’d like to comment on any of the topics in this show, or suggest a topic of your own, please get in touch with us on Facebook or Twitter, send an email to thinkoutloud@opb.org, or you can leave a voicemail for us at 503-293-1983. The call-in phone number during the noon hour is 888-665-5865.