“Rhytidome” Copyright Susan Brubaker Knapp 2026 41" x 47.5" White fabric, colored fabric squares, glue, cotton batting, cotton thread, cotton backing fabric. Digitally altered photo by the artist, covered with tiny hand-cut fabric squares (smaller than 1/4") placed with tweezers and glued down one at a time, then free-motion machine quilted. Rhytidome is the outer layer of bark on woody plants, including trees. Like people, the "skin" of trees is smooth when young, and develops distinctive wrinkles and textures as they age. Recent groundbreaking science is discovering many other ways that trees are like people – they live in family groupings, share nutrients, communicate with each other, and warn each other of dangers. Since childhood, I've felt a close kinship with trees, and take every account of abuse personally. I've had a particularly hard time with the death of the Grandmother Trees, cut down for a hideous swath of Trump's border wall in Arizona. These trees were estimated to be 150-250 years old. The last one in this grove in was bulldozed in Lochiel, Arizona, on Oct. 5, 2026. In indigenous cultures, grandmother trees are revered and viewed as living family members. How the trees must have screamed out to their family members as they were ripped from the earth.
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