Evergreen

was composed of 75 discarded Christmas trees, collected from sidewalks and curbs in the days after the holiday season. I spent hours searching, gathering what was once the centerpiece of celebration, now stripped bare and tossed. I hauled them into an empty classroom, transforming the space into a dense, fragrant indoor forest.

Over several weeks, I invited friends, classes, anyone to join me in pulling pine needles off by hand. The room filled with the sharp, earthy scent of decay and resin.

The title Evergreen speaks to the tree’s cultural symbolism: endurance, eternal life, the comfort of something staying green even in the dead of winter. The trees were no longer evergreen. They were drying, shedding, collapsing. Still, they carried the imprint of ritual, family, warmth, and care.

This piece was about reclaiming what we discard, making space to witness beauty in decomposition. Trees, like people, grow tall, reach for light, become shaped by their environments. They’re adorned, judged, relied on, and forgotten. In Evergreen, I wanted to slow that forgetting down. Let people feel the weight and texture of these former symbols, and maybe, reflect on how we treat living things—especially once they stop performing.