Author(s): Shinji Turner-Yamamoto

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The Global Tree Project is an international art initiative from artist Shinji Turner-Yamamoto that seeks to open and affirm connections between audiences and the natural world. Working with identifiable imagery the artist encourages audiences to encounter aspects of nature and therein to discover commonality and connection. Sitespecific installations, sculpture, and paintings in venues throughout the world reopen our connection with nature, to be whole in a society integrated in environmentalism with a new vision through it. The projects explore a poetic reunion with nature, making visible bonds and similarities between plant life and humanity, emphasizing ecological wisdom and the interconnectedness of all life. They illuminate our mutual destiny and the precarious beauty of this relationship. The selected projects documented in The Global Tree Project transport viewers to a ruined folly on a cliff overlooking the Celtic Sea, to the Sutra Hall of the 8th century Kiyomizu Temple, a garden in New Delhi, and on to the Mongolian Gobi Desert, and abandoned architectural landmarks in the American Midwest. Included are essays by Patricia J. Graham, Justine Ludwig, and the artist. Born in Osaka, Japan, Turner-Yamamoto studied fresco at the Kyoto City University of Arts. Sponsored by the Italian government, he studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti, Bologna, where he lived for eleven years. Turner-Yamamoto's work has been the subject of solo shows at the Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, Ireland; Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Villa Croce, Genoa, Italy; and the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Ohio. His prizes include the 2011 ArtPrize International Juried Award; the Gold Leaf Award, International Society of Arborioculture; UNESCO-ASCHBERG Bursaries for Artists; Pepinieres Europeennes pour Jeunes Artistes; first prize from the Targetti Light Art Collection. Turner-Yamamoto lives and works in Cincinnati, Ohio and Washington, DC.