- [Randy] Hi, I'm Randy, personally inviting you to put the Greater Eastside Remodel team to work on your next remodel, renovation, or construction project.

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(bright music) (birds chirping) - [Todd] That whole idea of trees communicating is fascinating.

Like, well, how can I translate that idea into my art?

I was like, drawing trees, and the root systems connected at first.

But I kept thinking about and pushing it, which eventually led to the trees themselves making the marks and telling a story.

(gentle upbeat music) (insects humming) - [Brangien] When you're driving on Interstate 5, the drop into Skagit Valley feels like a seismic shift.

Suddenly the landscape goes astonishingly flat with gold and green farmland stretching west from the Cascade foothills to Samish Bay.

This fertile delta is best known for its tulip festival but has been a breadbasket for generations, including for the Upper Skagit and Swinomish tribes.

Wild birds and aquatic animals flourish here as do artists.

I dipped into the valley to visit Todd Horton, whose inventive art experiments reflect the tide flats and fields, winding rivers, and cool woods where he lives.

His latest artistic endeavor is called "Topographia" from the Greek meaning writing about place.

And in this case, the surrounding trees and tides are doing the writing with a series of drawing devices Horton constructed from simple materials which he affixes to branches and river pilings.

In a solo show at Perry and Carlson Gallery in Mount Vernon, these minimalist works have a starry mystery to them.

- Kind of looks like some nebula or something.

- Yes, they're very- - Like a reference to the night sky is what I kind of like about both these.

And there's all this symbolism with trees, right, in old stories and myths around the world, where the trees connect the earth to the sky.

They're like these pillars.

They uphold the whole cosmic order.

So I like that reference back of suggesting stars in the night sky from the tree markings.

- [Brangien] I went with Horton to several of the places he's making his "Topographia" index, first at a shipping-container studio located on an acreage that backs up to the Samish River.

A prominent eagle's nest is perched in a small grove of trees on the premises, a favorite spot for bird watchers.

Also in these trees, one of Horton's drawing devices made from wires, wood, and a large chunk of graphite.

- This is one I set up last night.

So I got these lines hooked up to the tree.

- Yeah?

- And I got this clothesline here where I can adjust it up and down easily.

- Okay.

- And then here on the edge of this field, you know, we get some good wind, and the trees move, or it's raining on here, helping make these marks.

- [Brangien] So you know now what means wind, what means rain, what means a little breeze?

- [Todd] Yeah, starting to read it.

- [Brangien] Yeah, (laughs) yeah.

So this, there's no crayon or pencil?

- No, what I got here is this sharp instrument, and as the tree's moving, it's etching into this piece of cedar.

- [Brangien] Cedar, okay.

- And then I'll ink this, and then I pull those prints- - Oh, right, okay.

- From it.

That's how I do the etchings.

- [Brangien] Okay, cool.

- Sometimes it just gets in a place and starts digging.

- Mm, I see, okay.

- But if it's windy, it'll jump up and down and just like, puncture.

- Yeah.

Oh wow.

- So you get a variety of marks too with that.

- [Brangien] As part of his collaborative approach, Horton pulls the canvas out of the woods periodically, adding his own painterly flourishes before putting it back.

His washes bring depth and atmosphere to the pieces and set the scene for nature's scribbled messages.

Surrounded by waterways, Horton wanted to hear what the rivers had to say too, so he created a new invention, tidal drawing devices made from charred wood and plumbing supplies and set them up at a bend in the Samish River.

As the tide rises and falls, the charcoal marks the passage of time.

She silt, sediment, and pollutants add to the story.

- [Todd] Yeah, these are some pretty nice marks on here, not washing away yet.

- Yeah.

And so they definitely have already been covered several times.

- Yeah, yeah.

You see how high it's gone?

- Yeah.

- So as the tide comes in today- - Yeah, did you start with the tree paintings and then move to the river or vice versa?

- Yeah, with the trees.

I was working on that for a couple years.

Like, oh, how can I use the river and especially the tides?

How can I make some art with that?

And then I got this idea about trying to record the emotional response of the river to the world around it, and it all led to this.

- [Brangien] And so what do you see as an emotional response here?

- [Todd] I think the river's stressed.

- [Brangien] When you moved here, did you picture yourself standing out in a river, (laughs) putting logs around a piling to make art?

- [Todd] No, not at all.

I came from living in big cities.

I would never imagine living in West Edison, population eight- - [Brangien] Yeah.

- [Todd] Doing art like this, you know?

Like, this is so unforeseen.

(gentle contemplative music) The longer I'm out in a place like this, I know it's definitely changed how I make art.

(gentle contemplative music continues) - [Brangien] Horton says interpreting the markings produced by trees and rivers is a bit like reading tea leaves, or in this case, reading tree leaves.

It becomes a sort of botanical linguistics, a poetic way to imagine what nature might be telling us.

In a forest just off Chuckanut Drive, he recently installed one of his most ambitious experiments.

I'm counting, one, two.

How many points?

Three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11?

- I don't- - (laughs) Who knows.

- Know for sure.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

So I just tie something heavy on the end of the line, and I'm throwing them up over these branches, which is an art form in itself to get all this strung up like this.

- [Brangien] An Olympic sport.

- And I mostly picked this spot right here just because of the dramatic effect.

- Very dramatic.

- How the land drops off here.

- [Brangien] Yeah.

- This is just kind of floating out there.

Watch your step.

It can just get slippery in a couple spots.

The idea was, and I talked about it in the show, was like the dreams of trees.

- [Brangien] Right.

- [Todd] The dreaming forest, the dreaming trees.

And dreams are always a little hard to tell what's happening, but there's something there you know is important, but you have to interpret it a bit.

(Brangien chuckles) What I love about this series of work is it's much more fulfilling than just going to a studio.

- [Brangien] Right, right, getting out in the muck.

- Yeah.

- In the river and out here.

- Yeah, and dealing with the environment directly- - Right.

- And being in it.

- Yeah.

- I love that.

It gives me a reason to come out here into the forest.

And like being out here in different types of weather coming out every few days to check on it, I love it.

- [Brangien] Stare at the pieces long enough, and you start to see patterns, clusters, and pock marks where it seems like a point was being emphasized, underlined.

Some of the marks even look like letters.

Dendrology, the study of trees, has only just begun to reveal the extent to which trees send signals to each other.

What signals might they be trying to send us?

(gentle dreamy music) - [Announcer] "Art by Northwest" was made possible in part with the support of Greater Eastside Remodel.