Hemlock Hospice Sculpture Installation at Harvard Forest 2018-2019

Hemlock Hospice was an art-science collaboration between David Buckley Borden, 2016-2017 artist and designer-in-residence at the Harvard Forest, and Harvard Forest Senior Ecologist Aaron Ellison. It featured innovative art installed in the Fisher Museum and along a temporary interpretative walking trail on Prospect Hill, focused on eastern hemlock, a foundation tree in eastern forests that is slowly vanishing from North America as it is weakened and killed by a small insect, the hemlock woolly adelgid. Hemlock Hospice blended science, art, and design in respecting hemlock and its ecological role as a foundation forest species; promoting an understanding of the adelgid; and encouraging empathetic conversations among all the sustainers of and caregivers for our forests—ecologists and artists, foresters and journalists, naturalists and citizens—while fostering social cohesion around ecological issues.