Coppice Collective

Carson Fisk-Vittori and Michael Cafiero met in 2018 at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design where their shared love for fruit-bearing plants and sprouting trees first drew them together. Fisk-Vittori’s background is in art, design, and creative direction. Supported by the GSD Peter Walker + Partners Fellowship, she will be continuing her research on the intersection of reciprocal forestry strategies and climate change. Cafiero’s background is in architectural and landscape design, project management, and gardening. His research focuses on incorporating regenerative land management practices into public space and investigating new approaches towards equitable food systems.

Our concept, "Willow Talk," creates living willow sculptures that will continue to grow and be shaped by their new stewards. Over the three-day period, we will establish frameworks for these living sculptures to grow and flourish- including the potting and pruning, and hand-drawn visual accompaniments. Each piece will hold a unique set of instructions for caring for and shaping the water-loving saplings. During the event we will invite Art in the Open visitors to talk with us about plant behavior and plant care, and to tactically collaborate with us on generating possibilities for new plant+human relationships. 

"Willow Talk" promotes intentional practices about learning from and creating with complex arboreal life forms. Trees are ancient intelligent beings that hold stories of the past and future of our planet. They have evolved with human communities over millennia and can benefit from certain forms of human interaction. With increasing storm events and drought looming over both urban and rural areas, a re-imagining of plant stewardship is needed to collectively care for our built environment. In this case, each willow sprout holds enough life to form a new willow tree. Various techniques involving “live stake” planting have been used for streambank stabilization throughout history, forming resilient multi-species communities. "Willow Talk" is an opportunity for us to collaborate with the public community to critically think about and project new futures for living with plants as the climate changes. 

We draw inspiration from artists and landscape practitioners such as David Nash, Sol LeWitt, Full Grown UK, and Teresa Gali-Izard. Logistically, we will design our workspace to safely invite people to participate through drawing, modeling, planting, and sharing ideas together. The artwork produced by the end of the weekend will be a series of willow kits that incorporate a potted sculpture and a small handmade book containing technical care instructions and ideas generated from participatory interactions during the event. The physical materials will be brought to the site, but all of the art will be created and assembled during the event and will continue long after.