Local artists showcase nature, talent during ‘Visions of Trees’

Reds, oranges and yellows swirl around Bryn Hatton’s paper-mache life-size tree sculpture, ending a foot or so from the base.

More twigs and pieces need to be added to the top of the sculpture — hair for the naked woman that emerges from the tree trunk.

It isn’t finished, but Carol Hedin, owner of Sublime Design Gallery and Gifts, could not leave the piece out of the Vision of Trees exhibit.

The exhibit will be from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Friday at Sublime Design as a part of the August Gallery Walk.

“She kind of got into a predicament and moved away,” Hedin said of the artist. “I can’t not show it.”

As of Tuesday, Hedin said 10 Bloomington artists will show their work at the exhibit, three more than she first announced. The show will include two photographers, three wood sculptures, a water color painter and more. All of the pieces will fit into the tree theme.

Hedin said she has sold a lot of pieces of tree artwork throughout the year and hopes people will come to the gallery in the warmer weather.

“I’m kind of on the outskirts of the other galleries, but we’re getting better every time,” Hedin said. “Our first shows were snowy or rainy or freezing.”

Photographer Jon Benson’s images will hang in the exhibit, but Hedin said they are unlike photos taken by digital cameras. Instead, Benson uses a pinhole camera in which the lens remains open for an extended period of time.

“It has a 10 second opening, so it creates a fuzzy, kind of unreal thing,” Hedin said.

The second photographer, Jeff Danielson, prints his photos on canvas, making them appear as paintings.

“I think I try to find things that are different,” Hedin said about the various pieces of artwork.

Many artists in the exhibit have work for purchase in Hedin’s everyday gallery, including wood box sculptor David Day. While Hedin said she’s found that artists love to draw and paint tree images, Day finds beauty in the wood itself.

“You take a piece of wood out of the saw mill, and you never know what it’s going to be until you see it,” Day said.

He pointed at one box with a wavy-shaped drawer that had a darker brown wave across the middle of the wood.

“Most people would have thrown that piece away because furniture makers don’t look for pieces like that,” Day said, “but artists do.”