On the week of March 15, we began our tree books.

We worked on these books for two months, going through several steps to get them ready for the Frank Gallery in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. We worked with local artist Peg Gignoux (visit https://gignouxart.com/ for more information on her and her work), and she helped us create works of art using Akua ink, screen printing, and many more tools.

The first step we took was when we started these books. At first, we had to paint big pieces of paper blue for our sky background. We folded several parts of big paper to create the structure of our tree books. Then we Screen printed parts of poems that we wrote onto the shell of the book.

Next, we collected plants and parts of nature that we could create prints of. Of course, it couldn’t be something like a pine cone because of the density of it, but leaves and flowers were ok. We spread ink onto a jelly plate, set the plant down on the plate, took a piece of paper and a brayer, and rolled the paper onto the plant. When we lifted it, there was a gorgeous print of a plant! We used several different types of paper, like dictionary paper, map paper, and blank white paper. When there was a lot of ink on the jelly plate, we could make two or three prints from the same plant.

After that, we started to collage the prints onto our books. We cut up the Akua ink prints and made shapes and a natural background out of them. Then we glued them onto the book, which was now ready for more steps.

Then we took envelopes and hid them in different parts of our books. We collaged over them so no one could find them, making them look like the natural background on our books.

After this step, we started to make our writing pieces. Our first one was the Salute to my Roots, which was an essay about someone important to us that was related to us, or we considered family on a very small scale. I wrote about my cousin and my grandmother, two very important figures in my life. To me, it was easy. I had so much to write about them.

Then we wrote a Life List. A Life List is a list of things you want to accomplish in your life. Mine was really big because I have so many things I would like to accomplish. I hope to do all of them, and I will work as hard as I can to do them!

After we finished this, we had two more writing pieces to do. Our next one was our When This Is Over poem. It listed things that we wouldn’t take for granted after this pandemic is over, and it listed things that we hoped would stay the same in our lives. Here is a part of mine:

When this is over, may we never again take for granted

The laughter of children playing together

The hug of a grandparent

The take-off of an airplane

The everyday conversation with our neighbors 

A crowded grocery store

Long school plays

When this ends I hope for

The doorbell ringing from a delivery person 

Bringing dinner

As we sit in the living room

Getting ready to watch a movie

The time we revealed

To play board games with our families

Without any hurry

For other things

The last thing we wrote was titled My Wish. This (or these) was (were) a wish or wishes that we hoped for. It made me really stop and think about what I wished for. I know that there are those wishes that you make at the moment, like on a holiday break you wish it won’t end. Or how you wish for a thing or your birthday. But I don’t remember the things I’ve wished for on my birthday in past years. I remember these wishes that I wished for this writing piece because they are so incredibly important to me.

The last thing we did to close off this project was we read the book Wishtree by Katherine Applegate. It has many empowering statements that really made me think about my life and my hopes and dreams.

Thank you for reading this blog post about the Tree Book Project!