The Civic Life of Trees: Art, Health, and the Urban Canopy

What changes when we stop seeing trees as background scenery and begin seeing them as vital participants in civic life?

In this artist talk, photographer and civic artist Andrea Anderson Gluckman introduces Civic Canopy, an interdisciplinary art project exploring the relationships between urban trees, human health, community, and place. Through photography, aerial imagery, mapping, research, and experimental forms of civic portraiture and documentation, Civic Canopy asks us to look more closely at the trees that share our neighborhoods—and to consider what becomes visible when we do.

Drawing on research into the mental, physical, emotional, and social benefits of trees, Gluckman will explore how interaction with trees can function as a form of health and social infrastructure, as well as playing a civic role in urban life.

At its heart, however, Civic Canopy is an artistic inquiry into attention and relationship. What can art reveal that data alone cannot? And how might seeing trees differently change the ways we understand health, belonging, care, and our place within the more-than-human community?

The presentation is part of a collaborative project from the University of Rochester's Institute of Human Health and Environment, the Program of Dance and Movement, and Andrea Gluckman.

Register at the event website. Registration is required.