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Michael Asbill

@michaelasbill

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An emerging Processing Collapse Outpost: Uinta Mountains, UT

Michael’s recent trip to Utah has us thinking about the dynamics of forest loss and land use history in a radically different landscape. This is an excerpt from our research blog (link in bio):

Quaking aspen stands out in high contrast in the fall mountain forest. This is one of few deciduous trees on the landscape, with changing foliage atop its stunning white bole.
What I noticed up close were the names and initials carved into the bark. I would later learn a more technical term for this type of marking – arborglyphs.
Any carving in the pristine white bark turns black as the tree heals from the damage. The raised marks almost seem to blister, creating dark, exaggerated wounds. Not surprisingly, heavily marked trees are often dead or in decline.

I took note of the zigzagging log fences that run through public lands across the range. Built quickly from what I assume are the trunks of lodgepole pines, I’m guessing ranchers erect them to contain free ranging cattle in the national forest. Boundaries are established to make livestock more manageable in grazing areas.
What could be learned from dismantling a decomposing or no-longer-functional fence? Could the wood from the elevated (and less deteriorated) logs be dated to help us chart a chronology of occupation?

Forest fires have also made a deep impression on the landscape. I drove through Dutch John, UT, where in 2002 a fire ravaged the landscape near the Green River below Flaming Gorge reservoir.
The lost trees seemed to be pinyon pines and Utah juniper. How old were these trees and forests? 24 years after the burn, I saw little evidence of new trees growing. To what degree was the soil sterilized? The landscape is now alive with grasses and sagebrush alongside the black, skeletal trunks of charred trees. by @michaelasbill

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Peeling the bark from an uprooted Eastern hemlock.

Stands of hemlocks in varying states of death and decline are becoming ubiquitous in New York, where this tree has defined huge swathes of our ecosystem. The distinct shade and cool floor of hemlock forests are becoming eerily bright as branches fall and boughs are drained of life by the hemlock woolly adelgid.

Hemlocks had only just began to reestablish in parts of the Catskills and Hudson Valley where they were obliterated by the 19th century leather tanning industry. Barkpeelers spent the spring and summer felling, scoring, and peeling hemlocks to harvest their tannin-rich bark. The vast majority of trees were left to rot in the clearings; hemlock has never been considered good lumber.

The present collapse of hemlock has been a prolonged spiral. Adelgid populations initially stalled in the tree’s northern range because of freezing winters. As our yearly temperatures rise, it becomes more and more successful.

The laborers who did the footwork of denuding hemlock forests in the 19th century would have experienced the intense fuchsia color of hemlock’s inner bark as they split it. They would have smelled a rich, spiced, astringent scent as they pried the bark off with their bark spuds. And as hemlock disappeared, they saw the forest shift to hardwood saplings and underbrush.

In that story of extraction exists a relationship to trees that feels relevant, and strangely absent, today.
As we actively lose Eastern hemlock, our work is to see, acknowledge, and fall in love with its complex life and history in this landscape.

(Last two slides are from Peeling and Piling Bark for Prattsville Tannery, c. 1850)

@npsculpture @np_fpa #Easternhemlock #ecoart #sociallyengagedart #publicart #hemlockwoollyadelgid taken in Accord, New York by @michaelasbill

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It’s been a busy time for Processing Collapse!

At @waamart we’re pinpointing connections between the onset of chestnut blight and the rise of artist colonies in Woodstock. We’ve mapped the stump sprouts—living remnants of the former forest—on Overlook Mountain, and found an amazingly dense population there (over 50 just beside the trail!) Last week we were gifted two antique chestnut boards by Ira Brandes. We hope to use this material, along with stump sprout wood, to craft our work for the Woodstock Library.

We have also been busy studying American chestnut, Eastern hemlock, and white ash in other parts of our research radius. Yesterday we made a formal proposal for a public artwork centered on the ash collapse for the Rosendale Library.

We’re also taking part in the @np_fpa @npmfa Composium! Stay tuned for more information about our Carbon Harvest in the Eco Art Lab (Saturday 3:30-6:00). by @michaelasbill

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a year ago

WAAM residency dispatch (weeks 1 & 2)

To many, the history of Woodstock begins with the establishment of the Byrdcliffe and Maverick arts colonies in the first few years of the 20th century. Yet the landscape that Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead, Jane Byrd McCall, Bolton Brown and Hervey White selected as the setting for a utopian experiment was fresh off a century of deep extraction. We’ve been reading Alf Evers’ Woodstock: History of an American Town, and learning about how agriculture, leather tanning, glass fabrication and other local industries irrevocably altered the forest.

On our first research day in Woodstock we took a walk on the trail ascending Overlook Mountain. There were numerous American chestnut stump sprouts growing beside the path. As soon as we spotted one of those beautiful serrated leaves, we saw more and more of them. The tallest of the young trees were 15-20ft tall, but very thin. It seems like in most forests that have been preserved since the early 20th century we can reliably find young chestnut trees. They return again and again from the same stump that originally succumbed to chestnut blight—before falling into decline themselves.

The persistent presence of these short-lived sprouts helps us imagine the former forest. Woodstock’s early artists were working among dying American chestnut trees, and, we soon discovered, sometimes used the remnants for their own work.

An enormous privilege of working in the YES Gallery is our proximity to the WAAM archive, and wonderful archivist, Emily Jones. A bit of digging through the archives last Thursday revealed that the iconic Maverick Horse was crafted from American chestnut! One article even describes the work as being carved from a “hollow log.” Given that the sculpture was made in 1924, it seems probable that dead, blighted chestnut trees were readily available.

(Read the full update at processingcollapse.com/woodstock) taken in WAAM - Woodstock Artists Association & Museum by @michaelasbill

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We want to thank Birdy’s House in Delhi, New York for offering us a 2-week residency this summer. The space, a two-story house in the heart of town, is quiet, welcoming, and perfect for focused work. The owner/director/host (and writer!) Kay Keppler offers each resident a private bedroom and generously prepares all the meals. We encourage creatives who are looking for a comfortable space that is conducive to productivity to make an application for the 2026 season.

Our time in residence was divided into two visits. The first week, in mid-July, gave us an invaluable opportunity to explore the Western edge of our research area. We met with NYCDEP forester and vintage baseball enthusiast Collin Miller (see our earlier post), visited John Burroughs Woodchuck Lodge, and met with librarians in Roxbury and Fleischmanns.

The second visit, a month later, provided us with vital time to get organized after a hugely productive summer. We’re hard at work updating our website (check it out at processingcollapse.com), preparing for our residency at the Woodstock Artists Association, and planning a project with the Skene Memorial Library. We also found time to visit Pratt Rock and the Historical Society of Woodstock. taken in Delhi, New York by @michaelasbill

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a year ago

Over the past few weeks we constructed a solar kiln that will allow us to dry the wood we harvest for library projects.

The slanted structure is positioned to receive as much direct sunlight as possible. The interior is painted black for maximum heat absorption. Inside, a fan circulates the warm air while vents near the bottom allow evaporation to escape. We’re monitoring the temperature and relative humidity inside as it goes through heating and cooling cycles each day.

It’s important that we reduce the moisture content of our wood to 6-8% so that the permanent artworks we make for public libraries remain stable and strong. This tool will make it possible for us to process our own lumber and create work from the remnants of forest collapse.

@npsculpture #sociallyengagedart #ecoart #publiclibraries #sculpture by @michaelasbill

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Is this Oak Wilt?

We’ve noticed that oak trees are falling frequently in the forest near our studio in Accord. We’ll hear the intense sound of collapse midday, without any storm or wind event to point to.

Today we saw a DEC notice about Oak Wilt, a fungal disease that has been identified in only a few NY counties to the north and south of us. We took a walk to see if we might discover signs of infection. The patterns of leaf discoloration seem consistent with what we’re reading about.

We’re going to keep paying attention.

@nysdec #oak #oakwilt #sociallyengagedart #publicart #ecoart #accordny by @michaelasbill

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Earlier this week, we met with Collin Miller, a NYC DEP Watershed Forester and captain of the Mountain Athletic Club vintage base ball team.

Collin walked us through some of the land he has been working on in Delaware County. We discussed different forest management approaches for ecological concerns and spent time at a MaMa (Managing and Monitoring Ash) site. The MaMa program is identifying potential “lingering ash” in hopes of finding trees with resistance to Emerald Ash Borers.

Collin also showed us examples of parasitoid wasps (which feed on EAB) that DEP is releasing and tracking.

We also talked extensively about historic baseball. We can’t wait to use this knowledge to turn some ashwood bats from local trees and craft baseballs for libraries.

@delcovbb @macvb1895 #ecoart #emeraldashborer #ashtree #nycdep #vintagebaseball #delawarecounty #publiclibrary #sociallyengagedart taken in Delaware County by @michaelasbill

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a year ago

Our sculpture, Lodged, is now installed at @hudsonvalleyseedco ! Come see it during Upstate Art Weekend.

We are excited to announce that Hudson Valley Seed Company is championing our public art project for libraries by helping us launch a fundraiser. Their store will carry our handmade objects made from precious remnants of fallen ash trees.

Our 1:4 scale shipping pallets are built from the wood of a single dead ash tree harvested in Accord, NY. These specimens of forest collapse showcase traces of the Emerald Ash Borer infestation that is decimating the North American ash. EAB is thought to have been introduced to this continent through untreated shipping materials.

Our spoons are hand carved from the offcuts of this disappearing material. Each spoon is numbered to index discoveries from the process of making from a species in collapse.

Please stop by Hudson Valley Seed Company at 11 Airport Rd, Accord, NY, to support our project and see our living sculpture.

@upstateartweekend runs Thursday July 17-Sunday July 20. Store hours are 10AM-4:30PM.
Opening reception on Saturday July 20, 2-4PM.

@npsculpture #ecoart #ashtree #fraxinus #sociallyengagedart #publicart #emeraldashborer #upstateartweekend taken in Hudson Valley Seed Co. by @michaelasbill

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We’re installing a new iteration of Lodged at Hudson Valley Seed Company and preparing to debut the work, and a fundraiser for our library projects, during Upstate Art Weekend.

Lodged is a living sculpture that presents the trunk and root mass of a young White Ash tree that died next to a stream. The tree was removed from the forest and rearticulated to replicate the low angle at which it was suspended against a neighboring tree.

A carved channel running the length of the trunk will be filled with biochar (made from the other half of this tree) and soil. That fertile mixture will eventually support a small meadow of HVSC seedlings.

Opens Saturday, July 19. 11 Airport Rd, Accord, NY.
@hudsonvalleyseedco @upstateartweekend @npsculpture taken in Hudson Valley Seed Co. by @michaelasbill

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Day one of work on Uprooted.
We started the process of releasing soil and rock from the root mass of a collapsed Eastern hemlock. The entanglement between this tree and the surrounding ecosystem is intense and almost overwhelming. Some parts of the root system are dry and fragile, some strong and dense, still others pulpy with rot.

Join us today as we continue to unearth the root mass of this tree. As we work with remnants of hemlock woolly adelgid infestation, we will also peel the tree’s bark. This reanimates a practice that brought about the first collapse of this species in the Catskills: leather tanning with Eastern hemlock bark.

The Longest Day is at 54 Kornell Dr, Haines Falls NY from 10-6.

#easternhemlock #hemlockwoollyadelgid #ecoart #rootmass #forestcollapse #barkpeeling #publicart #sociallyengagedart taken in Haines Falls, New York by @michaelasbill

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This past winter, we took a walk with Cara Gentry, Coordinator of Land Stewardship at Wallkill Valley Land Trust, in search of a fallen ash tree in Rosendale. Our hope was to find a tree to use for a proposed public artwork at the Rosendale Library.

We discovered a beautiful ash on WVLT lands that was suspended above the ground on an old stone wall, preventing the wood from deteriorating.

With help from WVLT volunteer Gary Jacobson (and his adorable jeep) we cut the trunk into eight segments and used our log arch to pull them out of the forest.

The next step will be milling these pieces and letting them dry.

@rosendalelibrary @npsculpture #emeraldashborer #publicart #sociallyengagedart #ashtree #functionalextinction #publiclibrary #hudsonvalley #jeep #logarch #ecoart #publicsculpture by @michaelasbill

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