Tree News No. 6 ✰ PABF ✰ Sept 20–21, 2025

in ,
 

Tree News is launching Issue No. 6 at the 2025 Pittsburgh Art Book Fair!

Extreme weather and storms are intensifying while hurricanes are forming faster, starting earlier, lasting longer and becoming less predictable and more dangerous. In April 2025, while in conversation with Issue No. 6 contributor Benjamin Ogrodnik about art pedagogy and Hurricane Helene, a widespread, destructive storm system raced across western and central PA. Described as a “perfect storm of storms,” what began as a small core of thunderstorms intensified as the conditions needed to produce a big storm kept building. Our current moment feels similar. Climate crisis, right-wing authoritarianism, American funded atrocities, “post-truth” propaganda, deregulation, and extreme wealth concentration compound as each season brings yet another “unprecedented” weather event. What future storms – climatic, social, and political – are we seeding?

❧
Contents:
𝗧𝗿𝗲𝗲𝘀 𝗗𝗼𝘄𝗻: 𝗣𝗵𝗼𝘁𝗼𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗽𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗼𝘀𝘁-𝗛𝘂𝗿𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗻𝗲 𝗟𝗮𝗻𝗱𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗽𝗲, by Benjamin Ogrodnik, Assistant Professor of Art History, Augusta University, GA.
𝗦𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗪𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗿, a prose-poem by Ed Steck
𝗣𝗶𝘁𝘁𝘀𝗯𝘂𝗿𝗴𝗵 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗶𝗺𝗮𝗴𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗲𝘅𝘁 from the April, 29 2025 storm with additional photography by Alexis Oltmer
𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗠𝗼𝗵𝗮𝗺𝗲𝗱 𝗦𝗹𝗲𝗶𝗺𝗮𝗻 𝗟𝗮𝗯𝗮𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗯𝘆 𝗔𝗻𝗻 𝗛𝗼𝗹𝘁, Assistant Professor of Art Education, Penn State University, PA

Pittsburgh Art Book Fair
September 20–21, 2025
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA

 
 
 

NY Art Book Fair ✰ September 11–14, 2025

in ,
 

Excited to announce that Tree News will be an exhibitor at Printed Matter’s 2025 NY Art Book Fair! We’ll have the full back catalog, a sneak peek of our next issue, No. 6, and a selection of printed goodies from Tree News contributors and partner ❧ Stop by booth A14 and say hello.

New York Art Book Fair
September 11-14th, 2025
Opening Celebration: Thur, September 11, 7–10pm
MoMA PS1, Queens, New York

 
 

Atmospheres + Auras: Screening ✰ August 23, 2025

in ,

Obscuring Power will be screened at ATMOSPHERES + AURAS, part of the Mattress Factory’s Summer Film Screening Series co-hosted by Pittsburgh Sound + Image and curated by Benny Shaffer.

ATMOSPHERES + AURAS features five experimental and documentary short films that will immerse viewers in sensory environments shaped by elemental forces and industrial traces. Tomonari Nishikawa’s Light, Noise, Smoke and Light, Noise, Smoke and Kathy Rugh’s Don’t Look Directly into the Sun use 16mm film to experiment with visual interference and the limits of perception. Inger Lise Hansen’s Tåke (meaning ‘fog’ in Norwegian) drifts through various temporalities, geographies, and media formats, while Sun Xun’s Coal Spell conjures a surreal, animated meditation on energy, memory, and labor in northeastern China. Erin Mallea’s Obscuring Power anchors the program in our western Pennsylvania context, revealing how landscapes and atmospheres absorb and obscure histories of extraction, pollution, and power at the community level. The films will be projected from 16mm and digital sources.

After the screening, Erin Mallea, Luke Stettner, and Calista Lyon will join us in-person for a conversation led by curator Benny Shaffer.

Atmospheres + Auras
August 23, 2025, 8-10 PM
Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, PA

 

Glass Center Residency ✰ Spring 2025

in ,

I’ve been working at the Pittsburgh Glass Center starting in January 2025 to continue work I began in 2022 with the help of the Idea Furnace Residency. This winter I made nine new molds for casting and blowing glass and demolded them in March and April. I’m currently focused am now onto cleaning, finishing and polishing. I’m slowly conceptualizing the glass tumors/growths as they expand from Permissible Dose into new configurations and relationships.

 

LA Art Book Fair ✰ May 15–18, 2025

in ,
 
 

Tree News will be at Printed Matter’s LA Art Book Fair! Recent issues will be featured in OFF THE RECORD, an exhibition of zines and artist books organized by Departure Lounge (Los Angeles).

LA Art Book Fair: Off the Record
Curated by Jamison Edgar and Matthew McGaughey, the exhibition features artists working across the United States who explore our entangled sociopolitical relationships with more-than-human subjects. These artists use creative publishing as a foil to traditional cultural criticism, advancing their own forms of grassroots journalism.

Presenting Artists:
Tree News (Paper Buck, Erin Mallea), Marianne Hoffmeistter Castro, Matthew Lax, Sean Seu.

Los Angeles Art Book Fair
May 15-18th, 2025
ArtCenter College of Design, Pasadena, CA

 

Above: Re-printing and assembling the full Tree News back catalog. Issues 1-5 will be available at the LA Art Book Fair.

 

Condition Report at Tomayko Foundation ❉ March 14–April 18, 2025

in ,

My work Condition Report, installed as part of every speck of dust illuminated at the Tomayko Foundation (Pittsburgh, PA) in partnership with Associated Artists of Pittsburgh and april april. March 14–April 18, 2025. Images by: Chris Uhren

Read the exhibition review in Petrichor.

Erin Mallea, Condition Report, 2024–ongoing
Aluminum and bronze slag, thrift store jewelry chain, glass and plastic beads, fishing sinkers, pennies, nurdles and polyurethane foam from the Ohio River, and spotted lantern flies coated in beeswax, resin, nail polish and sugar.

 

every speck of dust illuminated ✰ March 14, 2025

in ,

A new iteration of Condition Report will be on view as part of every speck of dust illuminated opening March 14, 2025 at the Tomayko Foundation juried by Patrick Bova & Lucas Regazzi of april april.

every speck of dust illuminated
March 14 – April 18, 2025

Alexandra Lakin
Karen Lue
Erin Mallea
Joseph Ryznar
Shori Sims

every speck of dust illuminated presents a tableau of the everyday. Inspired by Richard Siken’s poem “Visible World,” the exhibition sketches a feeling around quotidian notions of quietude, the banal, dreaming, and interiority (Siken, 2005). Assembled here is the work of five artists with ties to Allegheny County, each of whom have distinct material approaches to observing these notions and the memories inflected therein.

 

Uprooted: Plants Out of Place ✰ March 22, 2025

in , ,
 

Issues of Tree News will be featured in Uprooted: Plants Out of Place, opening March 22, 2025 at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. The exhibition explores humans’ role in the history and future of invasive plants.

Read more about Plants Out of Place in the New York Times!

Tree News No. 3, Summer 2022

 

Machina Ex Natura ✰ Feb 20–March 31, 2025

in

An iteration of my installation, Permissible Dose, and my short film Obscuring Power, will be on view as part of Machina Ex Natura at Kentucky College of Art + Design’s 849 Gallery from February 20–March 31, 2025. Thanks to Robert Zacharias for technical assistance.

 

Glass Center Residency ✰ Winter 2025

in ,

I’ve returned to the Pittsburgh Glass Center for a second Idea Furnace Residency. I am continuing work I began in 2023 (see below), and making nine new molds for casting and blowing glass.

 

Tree News ✰ Public Collections + Local Sellers

in

Tree News No. 5 was recently acquired and added to the collections of several institutions. It’s now in: Los Angeles Contemporary Archive, Otis College of Art & Design’s Artist Book & Zine Collection, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh’s Zine Collection, and on its way to George Mason University Library.

In addition to purchasing online, copies are available at Fungus Books and Paper, Dirt in Pittsburgh.

 

Tree News at PABF ✰ Sept 28–29, 2024

in

Left: Travis Mitzel, Tree of Heaven and Spotted Lanternfly relationship sprawl across time, Pennsylvania, and beyond, 2024. Right: Erin Mallea, found, stomped Spotted Lanternfly, 2023.

Tree News No. 5 is launching at the Pittsburgh Art Book Fair at the Carnegie Museum of Art in late September! Subscribe or pre-order here.

Issue 5 features contributions from scientists, historians and anthropologists to consider the larger context of Spotted Lanternfly's (SLF) arrival to Pennsylvania and spread in North America. We examine the media buzz and invasion rhetoric of the viral “STOMP!” campaigns, the history of the insect’s preferred plant, Tree of Heaven, in Pennsylvania, and novel coexistence on a planet ravaged by human industry and climate change. What does it mean to be “invasive” to already transformed and evolving ecosystems?

The issue was organized, designed, and produced by Erin Mallea and Travis Mitzel. Issue No. 5 features an excerpt from an Interdisciplinary Roundtable about the SLF at the American Ethnological Society’s Spring 2024 Conference in Pittsburgh, PA. The panel included presentations by Nicole Heller, Ecologist and Associate Curator of Anthropocene Studies at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Kelli Hoover, Professor of Entomology at Pennsylvania State University, Travis Mitzel, Artist and Instructor at Seton Hill University, Noah Theriault, Associate Professor of History at Carnegie Mellon University, and Emily Wanderer, Associate Professor of Anthropology, at the University of Pittsburgh. The panel was organized by Noah Theriault, Nicole Heller and Emily Wanderer.

The issue concludes with an essay by Maria Ryabova, PhD Candidate in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh, focused on the development and implications of a Spotted Lanternfly-killing robot within the context of robotics research ecosystems.

 

Installation at (___) Residency ✰ May 2024

in ,

Condition Report, detail, work in progress, 2024. Aluminum and bronze slag, thrift store jewelry chain, and beads, polyfoam "stones" and spotted lanternflies coated in beeswax, nail polish, resin, and sugar. Photo: Sean Carrol

Installation images from Condition Report, a residency exhibition at (___), aka Blankspace in Pittsburgh, PA during the month of May 2024.

(___) invites artists to creatively engage vacant spaces within a house undergoing slow renovation. (___) and its primary steward, artist Joey Behrens, offer the space as a resource and invitation to engage in experimental, playful, and generative acts of co-creation.

Photos: Sean Carrol

 

Shiftworks Kayak Tour Returns ✰ August + September, 2024

in

Photo by Ishara Henry

I’ve been commissioned by Shiftworks to design a tour in the public realm again this summer. Join me for kayak tours to Sycamore Island in August and September, 2024.

Sycamore Island is one of the few undeveloped islands in Allegheny County. Managed by the Allegheny Land Trust, Sycamore Island hosts a significant floodplain hardwood forest and presents an opportunity for the public to visit and experience a woodland that is imperiled in Pennsylvania.

Participants will be led on island walking trails with a series of listening prompts. Tour goers will practice redirecting attention by closely listening to distant, subtle, and shifting sounds, increasing awareness of our larger sonic environment.

Learn more and register here.

 

Carlow University Impact Series ✰ February 26, 2024

in

I’m honored to be participating in Carlow University’s inaugural, Impact Series event, moderated by Carlow President Dr. Kathy Humphrey: Solutions for a More Sustainable World.

I will be speaking about my exhibition, Permissible Dose, and short film, Obscuring Power, which will both be on view at the Carlow University Art Gallery opening in April 2024.

To register for the event, visit https://bit.ly/47Zc22F.

Monday, February 26th | 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Rosemary Heyl Theatre at Carlow University

 

Roundtable: Cultures of Atmosphere ✰ December 6, 2023

in

I’ll be a panelist at Cultures of Atmosphere, a virtual roundtable discussion about the ways that artists and community members figure, represent, respond to, and participate in an atmospheric commons, facilitated and organized by artists Lindsey french and Alex Young.

The event will focus on southwestern Pennsylvania as a region where conditions of toxicity and industrial pollution have significantly impacted social and ecological communities, and where local conversations regarding shared atmospheres have generated international public discourse and environmental legislation.


December 6, 2023, 7pm EST
Online via Zoom ✰ REGISTER