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WORK TITLE: Treegirl
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S): TreeGirl
BIRTHDATE: 5/23/1969
WEBSITE: https://www.treegirl.org/
CITY: Sonoma County
STATE: CA
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born May, 23, 1969; married.
EDUCATION:Graduate degrees (experiential environmental education and arts; consciousness studies).
ADDRESS
CAREER
Arborist, writer, photographer, educator, and minister. International Society of Arboriculture (ISA) certified arborist and permaculture landscaper with their Sonoma County business, Abundant Earth Landscaping and Tree Care, Sonoma County, CA; ISA certified arborist and permaculture landscaper. California naturalist via the University of California; trained as a facilitator in Work That Reconnects and as rites of passage guide with Rites of Passage, Inc.; taught college-level interdisciplinary conservation education for more than ten years; former codirector of the first Forest Therapy Guide training program in the U.S.
MEMBER:International Ecopsychology Society, American Society of Ecopsychologists, Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids.
AWARDS:Nautilus Book Award Winner for Photography, 2017, for TreeGirl.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Arborist and naturalist Julianne Skai Arbor is also an educator who helped pioneer the first program in environmental arts. Arbor moved from Chicago, Illinois, to California in her twenties to attend graduate school. When she first saw the California redwoods and sequoias, she discovered her passion for trees. Then, sometime later, Arbor was traveling in an Australian rain forest when she saw two trees twisted together. It reminded Arbor of dancing, and she had a fellow traveler take a picture of her among the trees’ branches. Arbor decided to be naked for the shot. At around this time, she officially changed her last name to Arbor.
Since the initial photograph in Australia, Arbor has photographed herself nestled naked in more than seventy species of trees around the world. ““It’s a little edgy for people,” Arbor noted in an interview with Marin Independent Journal Online contributor Vicki Larson, adding: “There’s absolutely no separation between humans and nature. To take my clothes off is another way to blend in and to show that we’re not separated.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 2017, review of TreeGirl: Intimate Encounters with Wild Nature.
ONLINE
Body Spirit Awareness, http://www.bodyspiritawareness.com/ (June 8, 2018), author profile.
Carney & Associates Website, http://carneypr.com/ (June 8, 2018), author profile.
Marin Independent Journal Online, http://www.marinij.com/ (March 13, 2017), Vicki Larson, “TreeGirl Photographs Herself Naked in Trees to Inspire ‘Rewilding.'”
San Francisco Book Review, https://sanfranciscobookreview.com/ (January 15, 2017), Aron Row, review of TreeGirl.
TreeGirl Website, https://www.treegirl.org (June 8, 2018), author profile.
Bio
Picture
TreeGirl, aka Julianne Skai Arbor, is an Interdisciplinary Arborist and author of the 2017 Nautilus Book Award Winner for Photography, TreeGirl: Intimate Encounters with Wild Nature. She has been on the forefront of the fields of ecotherapy, nature connection and environmental art since 1995. She travels around the world to learn from the trees first hand, and with a remote control and a tripod, photographs herself intertwined in intimate connection with the forest. To date, she has intertwined with over 70 species of trees in 14 countries.
Julianne is certified as an arborist through the International Society of Arboriculture, as a California naturalist through the University of California, as a permaculture teacher, has been trained as a facilitator in Joanna Macy's Work That Reconnects and as rites of passage guide with Rites of Passage, Inc.
She has taught college-level interdisciplinary conservation education for over 10 years, including pioneering the very first academic program in Environmental Arts. She holds graduate degrees in experiential Environmental Education and Arts and Consciousness Studies. She was the former Co-Director of the first Forest Therapy Guide training program in the US, and is active with the International Ecopsychology Society and the American Society of Ecopsychologists.
Julianne is a member of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids, and has also been ordained as a Minister through the Universal Life Church, and is available to conduct marriage ceremonies, as well as other rites of passage.
With her passion for trees she creates an experiential bridge for people to connect with wild nature through presentations, workshops and trainings in forest ecotherapy, as well as immersive nature retreats. When not on her quest to meet new trees, she is at home amidst the native oak and coast redwood trees in Sonoma County, California.
...More about Julianne Skai-ArborJulianne Skai Arbor
Julianne is available for sessions in shamanic healing and works with the Spirits in Retrieving Creative Power. She is also available for mentoring the creation of shamanic art, using watercolor as a medium.Julianne is available for sessions in shamanic healing and works with the Spirits in Retrieving Creative Power. She is also available for mentoring the creation of shamanic art, using watercolor as a medium.
Julianne is most passionate about interspecies communication, especially with trees. Well-known locally for her environmental fine art photography (www.treegirl.org), she is currently working on publishing a book of her intimate photographs with trees from around the world, and will be profiled in an upcoming documentary film called "TreeStory". (www.treestorymovie.com).
Julianne has also been trained and works as an apprentice Vision Quest Guide with Rites of Passage, Inc. based in Santa Rosa. (www.ritesofpassagevisionquest.org) She will be assisting guiding on an upcoming Women’s Quest in June, 2011 in the Inyo Mountains, CA.
Julianne also works with her husband as an ISA certified arborist and permaculture landscaper with their Sonoma County business, Abundant Earth Landscaping and Tree Care. (www.abundantearthlandandtree.com)
How to contact Julianne:
Website: www.TreeGirl.org
Phone: (707) 332-9925
Email: treegirl@sonic.net
JULIANNE SKAI ARBOR
PUBLISHING CAMPAIGNS
BEAUTIFUL MARIN IJ FEATURE ON TREEGIRL
KATHLENE
The Marin Independent Journal published a beautiful feature story about TreeGirl this week.
Julianne Skai Arbor, aka TreeGirl, is a photographer, certified arborist, conservation educator, and forest ecotherapist. In her spectacular new book, TREEGIRL: Intimate Encounters With Wild Nature, Arbor invites readers to share her love of the wildness and grandeur of Nature through more than 150 stunning photographs of herself and other women gracefully intertwined nude with fifty species of trees in thirteen countries. The captioned images are complemented with each species natural history and ethnobotany, and by five essays on the ecopsychology, science and spirituality of the human-tree relationship.
As Vicki Larson says in her article:
“Julianne Skai Arbor is used to the raised eyebrows, strange looks and snickers when she tells people that she photographs herself naked in trees.
People either get it or they don’t.
“It’s a little edgy for people,” admits Arbor — aka TreeGirl — with a laugh.
But the thinking behind what she does isn’t all that strange.”
Arbor explains, “Imagine if we completely open our hearts to Nature and fall in love over and over again with the sacredness of this life force . . . I invite us modern humans to become re-enchanted with Nature, to experience intimacy and soulful engagement with trees and our more-than-human companions on this Earth . . . I have found my secret love in the plant kin-dom of trees. I encourage you to find your secret love in Nature as well – to find your wild within.”
Photo by Julianne Skai Arbor/TreeGirl “Birch Forest Embrace,” a white birch in Fairbanks, Alaska.
The author has traveled the world from Northern California, to Australia and Oceana, to Europe, to the plains of Africa in search of breathtaking trees. Once she finds one that she connects with, she sheds her clothes, scales the trunk and limbs, and photographs herself in authentic connection with the tree. The resulting photographs are gorgeous and awe-inspiring, inspiring the reader to find their own sensorial connection with nature.
Arbor will be giving a book talk, slide show and art exhibit at Open Secret Bookstore, 923 C St., San Rafael, 7:00 p.m. on March 20 and April 21. Admission is free.
You can read the entire Marin Independent Journal article and view some of Arbor’s stunning images here.
Carney & Associates specializes in traditional, digital and social media for authors, experts, products and services. Please contact Kathlene Carney for a free consultation to find out how our publicity services can contribute to your success.
Julianne Skai Arbor, aka TreeGirl, is the recipient of the 2017 Nautilus Book Award for Photography for her interdisciplinary photography book, TreeGirl: Intimate Encounters with Wild Nature. She is certified as an arborist through the International Society of Arboriculture, as a California Naturalist through the University of California, and has taught interdisciplinary college-level conservation education for over 10 years, including pioneering the first program in environmental arts. She holds graduate degrees in Environmental Education and Arts and Consciousness Studies. With her passion for trees she creates an experiential bridge to connect people with nature through forest ecotherapy, portrait sessions, and immersive nature retreats with trees around the world. She lives in Santa Barbara, California amidst the native oak trees. Her gallery of images can be found at www.TreeGirl.org.
TreeGirl photographs herself naked in trees to inspire ‘rewilding’
By Vicki Larson, Marin Independent Journal
POSTED: 03/13/17, 12:29 PM PDT | UPDATED: ON 03/14/2017 2 COMMENTS
Photo by Julianne Skai Arbor/TreeGirl
“Sundrenched Stafford Oak II,” an Oregon white oak Julianne Skai Arbor found in Novato’s Stafford Lake Park.
Photo by Julianne Skai Arbor/TreeGirl “Sundrenched Stafford Oak II,” an Oregon white oak Julianne Skai Arbor found in Novato’s Stafford Lake Park.
IF YOU GO
What: Julianne Skai Arbor, aka TreeGirl, book talk, slide show and art exhibit
When: 7 p.m. March 20
Where: Open Secret Bookstore, 923 C St., San Rafael
Admission: Free
Information: treegirl.org
More: TreeGirl returns to Open Secret Bookstore at 7 p.m. April 21 for a free book talk and art exhibit
Julianne Skai Arbor is used to the raised eyebrows, strange looks and snickers when she tells people that she photographs herself naked in trees.
People either get it or they don’t.
“It’s a little edgy for people,” admits Arbor — aka TreeGirl — with a laugh.
But the thinking behind what she does isn’t all that strange.
“There’s absolutely no separation between humans and nature. To take my clothes off is another way to blend in and to show that we’re not separated,” says Arbor, a certified arborist and environmental educator.
ADVERTISING
It’s easy to ignore that in this technology-driven, environmentally and politically divisive time, however. Which is why the 47-year-old Sebastopol resident believes what she does is more important than ever.
Arbor’s recently self-published book, “TreeGirl: Intimate Encounters with Wild Nature” (200 pages, Tree Girl Studios, $45) is extensively researched, detailing the natural and cultural history of some 50 species of trees from 13 countries on four continents plus lots of sensual nude photography. Arbor will be at Open Secret Bookstore in San Rafael on March 20 and again on April 21 to share stories and photos from her book.
Arbor doesn’t expect people to strip down and climb trees in order to connect to nature, or even to have the same passion for them that she does. But she hopes her book and photos inspire people to “rewild” — discover the wildness within all of us as well as the natural world.
CALIFORNIA INFLUENCE
Arbor discovered her affinity for trees when she moved to California from her native Chicago in her 20s to attend graduate school. The state’s redwoods and sequoias blew her away.
But it wasn’t until she came upon two trees in an Australian rain forest some 20 years ago that had twisted into each other in a way that looked like they were dancing together that she found her calling. She gave her friend her camera, climbed the trees to nestle into the branches, took off her clothes and asked her friend to photograph her. That’s about the time she changed her last name to Arbor.
Being naked in trees allows her to have a deeper relationship with them.
“It’s another level of sensory awareness. You can use your hands certainly, but to feel the texture of a bark over your entire body is a totally different experience. It’s a challenge. It’s not necessarily always comfortable, and we live in a very comfort-oriented world,” she says. “It’s an edge of wildness. And it keeps me feeling and looking young.”
DRAWN TO THE UNUSUAL
Since then, she has nestled with more than 70 species of trees around the globe. She’s especially drawn to unusual trees, from the water-swollen African baobab to the massive-leaved welwitschia of Nambia to Australia’s barrel-shaped boab.
“I can remember the feeling of the bark of each one of those trees,” she says.
Before Arbor, a self-taught photographer, heads off to photograph herself in a tree, she does extensive research, especially the historical relationship people have had with a species, whether for food or shelter or fiber.
“It’s just a different way of relating to the tree knowing how much it has to offer,” she says.
Finding trees to feature is a bit of a treasure hunt, she says. And then, not every tree is photo-worthy.
“Where I’m going to fit is the exciting part. If I don’t fit, then it’s not a good picture,” she says.
FULL OF CHALLENGES
Hanging out naked in trees doesn’t come without its challenges, however. Even though she climbs fully clothed and then disrobes (“It’s really scratchy!” she says), she’s gotten rashes, a head full of baby ticks, attacked by biting ants and even a leech in her vaginal area from her time in trees. And although she tries to photograph early in the morning or at dusk — when the light is better but also fewer people are around — she’s occasionally been surprised by interlopers.
But none of that bothers her.
“It’s my spiritual practice,” she says.
Her book is “an artful mix of the female and arboreal form,” writes psychologist Joe Hinds, co-author of “Ecotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice.”
Photographer Erica Mueller, founder of the Embody Project, calls her book a “brilliant body of work.”
“I know this is my work in the world. I work for the trees,” she says. “I feel the trees have asked me to create the books. I’m just in tune with the trees.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Vicki Larson
Vicki Larson is an author and has been an award-winning lifestyles editor, writer and columnist at the IJ since 2004. She has worked as an editor in Santa Rosa, Petaluma, Walnut Creek, San Francisco, Napa and Miami. Reach the author at vlarson@marinij.com or follow Vicki on Twitter: @omgchronicles.
Arbor, Julianne Skai: TREEGIRL
Kirkus Reviews. (Sept. 1, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Arbor, Julianne Skai TREEGIRL TreeGirl Studios LLC (Indie Nonfiction) $45.00 1, 15 ISBN: 978-0-692-72604-4
A conservationist and art photographer explores the erotic aspects of trees. For more than 20 years, Arbor has been creating intimate photos of trees and people together. The humans, which include herself and others, are nearly always nude, and the folds and curves of their bodies harmonize with the sinew of the trees. In one, the author prostrates herself, as if on an altar, along a platform at the base of a 285-foot mountain ash; in others, she reclines on a willow that appears as though it's bending to drink at a nearby pool or nestles in the crook of a windblown Cyprus, the curve of her back in perfect accord with the outermost bough's lurch to the left. In one black-and-white photo, she molds herself to the basal furl of an enormous fig tree, pressing her palms and her cheek against its bark, looking like something from the pages of Ovid's Metamorphosis. "For tens of thousands of years," she writes, "people took refuge under trees, held council under trees, and depended upon trees for survival." Indeed, from even earlier. Anyone perusing Arbor's book can't help but feel eerily reminded of humanity's distant ancestors--the earliest hominids--and how some of them would have lived nearly their whole lives in the vanished oaks and beeches of the Pliocene ("we lived in kinship with them," she achingly writes of that forgotten past). Sometimes the models' fetal poses in the trees drift toward the sentimental, a la Anne Geddes' work, and some readers may be amused by the fact that sometimes the models are difficult to locate, bringing to mind Where's Waldo? But such levity isn't unwelcome, and it serves only to intensify the fact that humans can appear eerily camouflaged in nature. Fortunately, Arbor has a remarkable eye for how light and shadow shape the viewer's experience of texture, and some pictures are every bit as powerful and haunting as Edward Weston's images of bell peppers--or, for that matter, of trees. Forest giants from Tasmania to South Africa to Anatolia have never seemed so alive. A vital, visually stunning photographic volume.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Arbor, Julianne Skai: TREEGIRL." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Sept. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A502192094/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=e8b049db. Accessed 17 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A502192094
TreeGirl: Intimate Encounters with Wild Nature
We rated this book:
$45.00
My first reaction was to gasp at the splendor and beauty of the trees so magnificently displayed in these photographs. It is a spiritual experience to view these natural phenomena. While the author attempts to show a “sensual connection” with these denizens of the forests by photographing nude females within or on their limbs, I found such intimate connections annoying. The author, also known as TreeGirl, writes lovingly about her passion for these majestic structures. As an arborist and conservationist, she knowledgeably describes the trees within the ecosystem while urging the reader to reconnect with nature. Examples of trees from more than a dozen different countries are arrayed on oversized pages, some familiar, others exotic. California’s giant Sequoia, the Buckeye, Pacific Dogwood, and Canyon Live Oak are recognized by locals. But the Baobab intrigues the viewer from its site in South Africa, and the ancient olive trees of Greece have survived the ages. There are the various Eucalypti of Australia and the Cypress of New Zealand. Rich in information, ardently anxious for conservation, and gifted in capturing these photographic images, this book would be a treasure…except for the nude female bodies, which may denote scale, but, to this eye, just pollute the serene beauty of these natural wonders with the hubris of man.
Reviewed By: Aron Row
Author Julianne Skai Arbor
Star Count 3/5
Format Hard
Page Count 200 pages
Publisher TreeGirl Studios LLC
Publish Date 2017-Jan-15
ISBN 9780692726044
Amazon Buy this Book
Issue February 2017
Category Art, Architecture & Photography