Wil Bosbyshell leaned against a cherry tree in his backyard. One hand held a sheet of paper in place while the other shaded. He is a professional artist who has been working in Charlotte for 30 years, capturing the images he sees on his hikes.
But, more recently, he’s gotten really into trees.
“So, I’m just rubbing the pencil sideways with a long point,” Bosbyshell said. The pencil scratched along the paper. “And I’m just gradually trying to rub it on the paper without poking the tree through the paper … which happens quite easily.”
A ghostly image appeared, almost like an ultrasound. He started drawing trees because of their complexity; the impressions often revealed features Bosbyshell didn’t see before. In one drawing, cross-hatched cuts marked the tree. They looked like scratches, and Bosbyshell assumed they were until an entomologist saw his drawing.
“He said this is bugs eating — a certain type of beetle eating into the bark where there’s a little break,” he said.
The process always begins outside with the rhythmic rubbing, then he takes the shading inside to refine. It might take a long afternoon or several months to complete. Inside his home, he showed off a drawing that stood taller than the average person.
“This one was … quite a challenge to rub on the tree because trees have branches that come out this way, and I didn’t want to poke a hole in the paper,” Bosbyshell said.
Drawing for the climate
Bark beetles and cattywampus limbs aren’t the only features Bosbyshell noticed during his drawing. Trees also record their interactions with humans. He pointed to a piece that his wife, Maura, had turned into a pillow.
“So, the tree is alive, and then, all of a sudden, it starts to die, and the bark gets eaten off by that acid rain up in the Smoky Mountains,” Bosbyshell said.
The trunk retained its bark, but the limbs had started to shed and die off. He said he wanted his trees to draw attention to climate change, and while climate change may not cause acid rain, they are related. Refining oil and burning fossil fuels like coal or natural gas releases sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. Acid rain occurs when those gases mix with water in the atmosphere.
Trees are also part of the solution. These silent sentinels absorb carbon dioxide and trap it. When they fall and decompose, that carbon returns to the earth, but the system only works when those trees are allowed to decompose naturally.
Millions of trees fell in western North Carolina during Helene, making catastrophic wildfires more likely. The cycle feeds into itself: Bad floods topple trees that burn before they can decompose. That releases more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, leading to worse floods that topple more trees.
“I really am moved by trying to get people to take the climate a little bit more seriously,” Bosbyshell said. “I was hoping this would be the way to sneak climate into people’s lives because everyone likes trees.”
He started asking people to write down their favorite tree memory at his installations. He received responses like “cloud watching with my dad under a tree” or the time someone proposed under a tree. The cloud-watching memory was one of his favorites.
Bosbyshell will display his work as part of Charlotte Earth Day. The event will feature performances, presentations and art installations for all ages. Charlotte Earth Day founder Hardin Minor said this year's theme is Creative Earth.
“Look at the seasons. Look at spring blooming now,” Minor said. “Nature is the ultimate artist.”
The exhibits will include Bosbyshell’s Memory Tree project. Minor recalled sharing his tree memory — the time his brother, Peter, climbed a tree in his backyard when they were growing up. His father was just gone to call the fire department to get Peter down when he fell from the tree and “landed on this patch of moss, and he bounced!”
“All of a sudden, I’m writing this information on this card, and I’m weeping and remembering that Peter survived,” Minor said.
For Bosbyshell, that emotional reaction is kind of the point.
“It’s just so personal,” Bosbyshell said. “We all have trees in our yard, in our neighborhood, by our school.”
