Taxodium

The bald cypress (Taxodium distichum) stands in black water, knees rising like ancient knuckles, trunks thickening with age. Needles emerge neon green in spring, turn rust in fall, and drift into the black water. Then the cycle repeats, beginning again with spring-green.

The cypress does not ask permission. It does not apologize for thriving. Its knobby knees rise from the muck and goo. It simply obeys the oldest command: be fruitful and multiply.

I adopt the term TAXODIUM as a moniker for a body of work I am developing. Projections for the work will include, but will not be limited to, an exhibition at the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens in Jacksonville, Florida. This exhibition will open in May of 2028 and run into September (exact dates are yet to be determined). Various other parts will be explored and added as I work through related concepts.

TAXODIUM is not a celebration of trees. It is an act of observation. It is the verbalized manifestation of an idea, a natural statement, and perhaps a visual manifesto. This tribute is not necessarily to this singular species but moreover to the concepts this particular species illustrates. It also celebrates the topography TAXODIUM prefers and the other species occupying those domains.

Through TAXODIUM, I refuse the lie of hierarchy. There is no “good” species or “bad” species. No native hero, no invasive villain. Only relationships and the consequences that flow from them.

Throughout this body of work—the paintings, videos, photographs, and the words that accompany—the charge is not to preach. The content is charged to witness.

The episodes watch gnarly knees hold eroding soil. They memorialize trunks standing fast against storms and time. They describe canopies shifting from green to rust to green again. They chronicle the activities of other species, including our own (Homo sapiens), as they busy themselves in the slosh and wiggle of tannic backwater.

TAXODIUM is crafted through the filter of Radical Naturalism. This philosophical stance demands aggressive, all-encompassing observation. It champions empirical evidence over ancient superstition. It celebrates direct experience over transcendental illusion. It states emphatically that nature is not elsewhere; we are fully implicated in it. We participate in it biologically, ecologically, historically. The term “radical” insists on roots: causes over appearances, material conditions over ideals, structures over symbols.

TAXODIUM is protest and affirmation at once. Protest against the impulse to vilify what will not submit. Affirmation that life keeps moving toward fullness even when we draw lines, build dams, spray poisons, call things weeds or invaders. The cypress does not care about our labels. It keeps growing. It keeps feeding. It keeps healing the bare spots we made. Above all else, it keeps thriving.

In TAXODIUM, I choose to watch. I choose to meet the cypress neither as enemy nor ornament, but as a willing partner. I plan to illustrate that it is part of the same command that runs through everything alive: be fruitful and multiply.

This statement is liquid. It is growing. Changing. Evolving. Like the cypress itself. Like the swamp. Like me.