A new exhibit by local artist and poet Bertha Rogers, Planting Wildness: Delaware County Returns to Roots, will open with a free wine and cheese reception in the Elijah Thomas Gallery at the Delaware County Historical Association on Friday, September 13, at 5 pm. The exhibit is an interdisciplinary installation, and Rogers will read from her poetry and lead a free book arts workshop during the opening reception. The exhibit, which is free and open to the public, will remain at DCHA through October 15; gallery hours are Tuesday - Sunday, 11 am - 4 pm.
Planting Wildness began in 1990, when Rogers and her family and friends planted 1000 Norway Spruces purchased from the NYDEC on her property near Treadwell. The field where they planted the spruces had been an apple orchard and a meadow; 23 years later, the spruces have grown to 40-50 feet tall and are home to many wild animals, including a fisher. After planting the spruces, Rogers planted about 1500 more trees and shrubs, including fruit trees, green ashes, hybrid poplars, hybrid elms, shagbark hickories, black walnuts, catalypas, and other species. Many have thrived, a few have not, but the landscape has been changed forever.
Rogers researched New York’s tree-planting as well and learned that, after the Catskills were denuded by settlers in the later 1700s and early 1800s, the animals had virtually disappeared, the hills and valleys like a desert. But in 1902 New York implemented a massive reforestation plan that continued throughout the years. Today, the Catskills and Delaware County are full of forests, many planted by individuals and by schoolchildren, 4-H members, and other groups.
Rogers’ exhibit, in part a documentation, aims to inform and encourage others to plant trees, those giants of nature. The exhibit includes paintings and illuminations with gold leaf, and artists’ books and boxes.
Bertha Rogers' poems appear in journals and anthologies and in her collections: Sleeper, You Wake (Mellen); A House of Corners (Three Conditions Press); The Fourth Beast (Snark Pub.); Even the Hemlock: Poems, Illuminations, Reliquaries (Six Swans), and Heart Turned Back (Salmon Poetry, Ireland). Her translation of Beowulf was published in 2000 by Birch Brook Press. She founded Bright Hill Press & Literary Center with Ernest M. Fishman in 1992 and she is Poet Laureate of Delaware County and was a featured poet for the first Festival of Women Writers in Hobart in early September. Her newest poetry collection is titled “Wild.” Rogers has been a teaching artist for many years and, in 2013, she contributed to the book Open the Door: How to Excite Young People About Poetry (McSweeney s & the Poetry Foundation). A visual artist as well, Rogers’ painting, prints, drawings, and artist books have been shown in hundreds of solo and juried exhibits. Rogers lives near Treadwell.
Planting Wildness was made possible, in part, with funds from the New York State Council on the Arts Grants Decentralization Program, administered in Delaware County by the Roxbury Arts Group. For more information, contact 607-746-3849 or email dcha@delhi.net
