Forest Geometries: Process & Development
In 2024, upon invitation to create a site-specific project for the Langlais Art Preserve, Gina Siepel (she/they) spent time exploring Bernard Langlais’s art environment and the biologically diverse forest beyond. They participated in planning walks with Georges River Land Trust staff for the Preserve’s new Woodland Trail and consulted with local forester Mitch Kihn to learn more about the ecological successions at play in the Langlais woods. Through sketching, mapping, reflection, and research Siepel became engaged with shaping an art experience that would emphasize the presence of change in the forest. Seeking to activate viewers’ senses and inspire deeper awareness of ecological processes—living and dying, growing and decomposing, photosynthesizing and transpiring—Siepel found inspiration in ancient philosophy, in the legacy of Bernard Langlais’s ruggedly experimental work with found wood, and in the Preserve’s rich visual environment.
Specifically, Siepel was drawn to a number of visually, ecologically, and artistically energetic areas along the Woodland Trail—for instance, a verdant bed of low-lying balsam fir, and a dense, disorienting corridor where a concentration of blown-down saplings has created a “pick-up sticks” effect on the forest floor. The question of how to introduce static, rational forms into these dynamic, transitional environments drove much of the project’s creative development, as did Siepel’s commitment to using low-impact materials and installation methods.
“I’m fascinated by the challenges of site specificity and of working with figure-ground relationships in this intensely activated visual, haptic, and sensorial space,” Siepel wrote in early project notes.
Inspired by recent readings on plant intelligence and the appearance of the golden ratio in flowers and leaf arrangements, Siepel became intrigued by the symbolic potential of placing geometric forms in the forest. Their research led them to the Dodecahedron and the Icosahedron—both shapes that are derived from the golden ratio. These forms are part of the family of five known Platonic solids, along with the Tetrahedron, Cube, and Octahedron.
As convex, regular polyhedra, Platonic solids have been associated since antiquity with the classical elements: fire, earth, air, water, and cosmos (or space). For Siepel, these elemental associations—combined with the pure, rational geometry of the forms—offered a compelling sculptural language to highlight the forest’s dynamic ecology.
In December 2024, with the assistance of the land trust’s stewardship volunteers, Siepel collected and stored on site more than 80 standing dead and deadfall balsam fir and red spruce saplings from the Langlais forest. Working in their home studio in Greenfield, MA over the winter, Siepel developed a precise method for calculating angles and constructed a jig to guide the individual cuts for each vertex of the polyhedra. While in residence at the Preserve in May and June 2025, Siepel prepared the sapling lengths on the jig, then assembled the five large-scale, open form polyhedra using hand-fabricated steel brackets designed for each unique shape. They carefully preserved the saplings' barks, mosses, lichens, branches, and worm trails—but applied color over top of these idiosyncratic surfaces using environmentally-safe milk paints and a hemp oil varnish.
Over several weeks, land trust staff and volunteers assisted Siepel in hand-carrying the sculptures (some fully assembled, others in sections) to their intended sites along the Langlais Woodland Trail.
Installed in distinct figure-ground relationships—some whimsical, others visually arresting—the sculptures will remain sited in these locations for approximately one year. In embrace of the project’s underlying theme of change and interconnectedness, no attempt will be made to resist the forest’s impact on the artworks.