By Jenny Zeller
A trip up Forest Hill Drive now provides the opportunity to engage with a new art experience at Cull Hollow by 2020 Artist in Residence Lucy Azubuike. Azubuike is a multi-media artist living in Frankfort, KY, who documents the shapes and forms found in trees as whole and complete works of art, exposing the magic in nature and capturing the unseen beauty that’s directly in front of us every day. By advocating perception shifts in the way we see and view the natural world, Azubuike’s work ignites an emotional connection to the environment as her figurative tree arts often mirror the human world around us.
“Nature is you; find her and you will find yourself.” ~ Lucy Azubuike
Azubuike brings that work to life with the meditative Me in Me Tree Art Sanctuary@Bernheim, featuring a series of mounted tree-art images discovered along the 1.2-mile trail of Cull Hollow Loop. Images are both figurative and abstract and accompanied by ancestral adages of Azubuike’s proverb-rich Nigerian Igbo culture. An interactive component to the installation invites participants to embark on a Cull Hollow tree-art scavenger hunt by scanning the provided QR coded art map. More importantly the work inspires the viewer to view nature in a new way and to seek their own tree-art discoveries at Bernheim and far beyond!
Through exposing the magic and wonders of the natural world, Azubuike attempts to connect us all through the worlds common humanity. Join Lucy Azubuike in her quest for documenting a million tree-art images at Bernheim (and far beyond) by posting your discoveries on social media with the designated hashtag #onemilliontreearts.
2020 marked the 40th anniversary of Bernheim’s Artist in Residence program and the value that art adds to the natural environment. Established in 1980, this internationally renowned program annually awards artists the opportunity to live and create site-specific work inspired by their total immersion experience at Bernheim. As we enter into our 41st year of the program, we will continue to celebrate the contributions of a program that has allowed our visitors to experience nature in a new way while enhancing awareness of Bernheim’s mission of connecting people with nature.