A new exhibition by artist Kristin Leachman at the Georgia Museum of Art focuses on close-up views of the patterns and biology of the longleaf pine and its ecosystem.
Leachman, who lives in California, traveled across the country to view deforested and reforested longleaf sites in southwest Georgia as part of her “Fifty Forests” project. Her resulting work, a series of painted biomorphic abstractions of pine bark, examines longleaf’s complex history and human attempts to revive its population.“Kristin Leachman: Longleaf Lines” opens July 23 and will be on display at the museum through Feb. 5, 2023.
The bark of the longleaf pine is scaly, thick and made up of red and brown hues. Leachman’s paintings capture the patterns and shades of that bark while representing the human impact of reforestation, including prescribed burns, a forestry practice that stretches back thousands of years.
Once a vast swath of the southeastern United States spanning 90 million acres, the longleaf ecosystem’s footprint declined to a mere 3 million acres in the 18th and 19th centuries due to rapid industrialization and the rise of the railroad. The lands would have disappeared entirely if not for the booming popularity of quail hunting in the 19th century and the need to preserve the lush longleaf understories where quail thrive.
UGA researchers have conducted a number of studies of the longleaf pine habitat and the species that live there, including the gopher frog and gopher tortoise.
