Instagram story viewer> @michaelasbill> Tagged

michaelasbill

@michaelasbill

921

followers

761

following

POSTS STORIES REELS TAGGED

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.

36

0

Recent work in the field and in our studio on a public art project for @woodstocklibrary .

We mapped the coordinates of over 130 living American chestnut stump sprouts along the trail up Overlook Mountain. These short-lived, resilient shoots have grown again and again where mature trees were lost to chestnut blight over a century ago. Where American chestnut once filled the canopy, we can still find it in the understory.

Another species we found in abundance on Overlook: timber rattlesnakes!

50

3

This week I shared months of work toward a @processingcollapse project for the Mountain Top Library in Tannersville, NY. There will be two hand-carved boughs of Eastern hemlock installed beside the front doors of the library. At ten feet tall, they render the needles, growth nodes and buds at 125x magnification.

The wood for this project comes from an Eastern hemlock that uprooted and died on the Kaaterskill Rail Trail, less than three miles from the library.

For my final review with @npsculpture I staged the carving-in-progress alongside writings, photos, and ephemera of forest research, regional history, and library collaboration. Hemlock holds a noted place in the regional history of the Catskills and Hudson Valley, where its bark was harvested en masse for the leather tanneries of the 19th century. The second-growth hemlock forest, facing existential threat today from the non-native hemlock woolly adelgid (HWA), is not perceived with as much public relevance.

I learned to recognize hemlock by looking for wool—a sign of the insect killing it. Then, I couldn’t stop looking at the tree.

Thank you to @alexis_elton_artist and @emiliehoussart for being an incredible committee to my unconventional “thesis,” to @emily_puthoff for creating a space for me in the wonderful Sculpture program, and to my collaborator @michaelasbill for committing to forests & libraries with me. The work continues!

(For more about hemlock and Mountain Top, visit processingcollapse.com where I am building out our research archive. There is so much to share and so much more to come).

85

14

💙🧡Humans of the Art Department🧡💙
We loved greeting prospective students today at the @sunynewpaltz accepted student day! Thanks to all the volunteers.
🦢🦜go hawks🦩🦚
•
#sunynewpaltz #npart #classof2030

206

5

Here’s a recap of our artists-in-residence @michaelasbill and @ripleyfolio of @processingcollapse who, over the course of seven weeks, transformed the YES Gallery into a research and design studio to develop a public art proposal for the @woodstocklibrary 🍃
_____

“Noticing American chestnut stump sprouts on Overlook Mountain during our first week in residence was the starting point for our project. We realized that the functionally extinct tree was a major presence in the forest at the time when ‘the story of modern Woodstock really begins’.

We are indebted to all those who stopped by during our residency to have conversations with us about the project.

We’d like to offer a special thanks to Tara Foley who invited us into the space.

Emily Jones, the dedicated archivist at WAAM, located information and artworks that were vital to our research trajectory.

Ira Brandes brought us a generous gift of two antique chestnut boards.

Leslie Gerber, Woodstock Library trustee, invited us to speak with the library board.

We thank Woodstock Library director Ivy Gocker for embracing our project and joining us on our final day in residence to hear our preliminary proposal.

We look forward to making a formal proposal before the end of the year.”

- Michael Asbill and Ripley Butterfield, Processing Collapse

Thank YOU, Michael and Ripley, for sharing your process and concepts with us and the community!

You can read their weekly residency recaps at processingcollapse.com

32

2

Halloween costume ideas inspired by Art Packs 👻

Which is your favorite? ✨

#garden #gardening #halloween #seeds #october #costume

70

2

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

90

9

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).

106

1

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)

73

1

Did you make it to the SLAPDOWN?? Come relive the slappening tomorrow 6pm Roost Arts in New Paltz where my new zine will be included on the reading table at the @ruleofthirdsstudionp opening show! @npsculpture @newpaltzprintmaking_ @sunynpart

3

1

We’re thrilled to welcome @michaelasbill and @ripleyfolio to the YES Gallery as our artists-in-residence for their public art project @processingcollapse.
⁣
Through October 15, the YES Gallery will become a research center for a permanent artwork proposal at the new @WoodstockLibrary. ⁣
⁣
The walls will become an active project mind map. As the work evolves and ideas find focus, the space will slowly transform into a design studio where Asbill and Butterfield begin to structure and visualize emerging concepts. ⁣
⁣
The artists will be present for public engagement from 2-5 PM every Thursday for the duration of this exhibition.⁣
⁣
Please stop by during this time to engage in conversation and collaboration!

80

8

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.

87

1