Art & Activism
Our mission is to use our art and creative activities to call awareness to the value of trees and forests in mitigating negative climate change impacts and in adding to the quality of all life on the planet.
"When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily."
-Mary Oliver ©2006
THE LAND
We appreciate that more and more cultural organizations are acknowledging ancestral lands, and we wholeheartedly embrace the same belief:
• It is with gratitude and humility that we acknowledge that we are working, practicing, and gathering on the ancestral homelands of the indigenous peoples of this land.
• They experienced tremendous hardship in being forced from their homes and lands, and we pay honor and respect to their ancestor's past and present as we commit to building a more inclusive and equitable world for the future.
MANAGED FORESTS &
UNTAMED TREES
We recognize and respect the history of Indigenous people and the fact that they lived, worked, hunted and farmed the land for over 13,000 years in North America without destroying it: stripping it of trees, over-logging, over-farming, and over-hunting.
In less that 500 years, European settlers displaced Indigenous populations and disrespected a culture that respected the land and practiced sustainable land use.
Now, we face a climate crisis resulting from centuries of industrial over-production, consumerism, commercialism, and greed. An insatiable need for forest products is resulting in massive loss of carbon sequestration sinks. Bad logging practices fuel catastrophic global warming more than any other human predation on the land.
As writers and artists, we commit to calling out disrespectful, unsustainable, and unloving treatment of the precious land. Our land. Not our land. The only land. All of it.
And we use our craft to love the land, share our love for the land with other people, and to use our work to promote sustainable, respectful forestry practices that recognize the trees, prairies, fields, and the animals that inhabit them.
We believe all life forms have a sovereign right to exist on their own terms, in their own spaces, without the constant threat or promise of human intervention.
Untamed Trees
A project merging art, writing, and activism. We work to inspire passion for the standing, noble forests that responsible science tells us are our best hedge against climate change. To call out and challenge corporate, non-profit and private interests that threaten our public forests.
Our Motivation
To engage new audiences in the fight to save our forests from logging and development by using visual art and writing to engender a love for our natural world.
Our Mission
Our mission is to use our art and creative activities to call awareness to the value of trees and forests in mitigating negative climate change impacts and in adding to the quality
of all life on the planet.
This project was started by Lori Bradley as a form of resistance after one of her favorite public forests was threatened by a large-scale logging plan. Lori's father was a logger. He quit the industry as a young man when he became disillusioned with the rapid destruction of forest lands around the Adirondack Park in northern New York State. He took a different path, becoming an engineer and public official dedicated to saving forested lands and advocating for clean waterfronts, especially those on Lake Ontario.
He was a take-your-daughter-to-work father and Lori attended many public hearings, zoning board meetings, conservation commission meetings and all the other meetings between citizens that make democracies of all sizes work.
She later went to graduate school for Management and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University but decided that her true passions were teaching, art, and writing and earned Master's Degrees in Art, Education, and Professional Writing.
Lori has shown her artwork nationally and internationally. She has an art studio in a refurbished mill building in New Bedford, MA. She's written dozens of articles for various publications on the arts economy in gateway cities, and a book about animal rights activism titled Dogs Are Better Than People. She enjoys hiking, traveling and camping with her husband and ever-growing pack of rescued dogs.