When I first draped wet sheets of paper over dead branches, roots and driftwood collected in North Hero, Vermont, I meant to reproduce the shapes. But the paper fit tight as a skin and could not be removed. The way it clung, stretched over openings and broke apart made it part of the tree, preserving and honoring its memory.
Eventually, I learned to cut the paper off the tree and paste it back together, forming an altered copy of the original - the shell- the skin - of the tree.
