By Grant Terwilliger
Black History Month allows a time for reflection and celebration. With a new year, new ideas are created to honor history and culture.
The office of diversity, equity and inclusion, students in the art department and other faculty at SUNY Plattsburgh started a new tradition for celebrating black culture on campus, Reflection Trees.
Coordinator for Multicultural Initiatives Chris Chamars was one of the organizers of the project along with Success Coach and Academic Coordinator Christopher Ryan.
“Christopher reached out in December with this proposal about an annual reflection tree. So I read the proposal and thought that it was a really great idea,” Chamars said. “We agreed to take the winter break to think of how this would come to life — how we would actually create this idea and make it real.”
Ryan sought to create student involvement not only with the making of the trees themselves but by allowing students to add reflection leaves and build community along the tree.
“Inspiration for this project came from the idea that history is not static; it’s something we inherit, shape and pass forward. The Reflection Tree offers a tangible way for people to add their voices to that ongoing story,” Ryan wrote in an email.
Chamars reached out to the Art and Theater departments, and Museum director Tonya Cribb for assistance on the project. They only had a limited amount of time, which affected their original plan for the project.
“We talked about possibly getting trees and then having fabric so people can write on them and add to it like a Christmas tree, where you put little ornaments up. As much as we liked that idea, that was a really tough one to get off the ground in less than a month,” Chamars said.
The project in its current state only took a few days. They started the project on a friday and sketched out the trees and gesso painted them, at the end of the day half of the trees were completed. At the end of their meeting Monday, they had finished all five of the trees.
Cameron Greaves,Student Association coordinator for the arts and public relations, helped reach out and organize other students in the art department and get them on board to help paint the trees. After the completion of the project, the trees were placed one each in Sibley Hall, Feinberg Library, Memorial Hall, Hawkins Hall and Au Sable Hall.
“People can see the tree and take time to think and come back. So it’s a way to invite community,” Chamars said.
Ryan sees the trees as a way for the campus to engage in community and not only think about the past but also the future.
“As Simone Weil wrote, ‘Human beings have roots by virtue of their active participation in a collective.’ The Reflection Tree is a reflection of that belief,” Ryan wrote in an email. “It’s a way for our campus community to engage in Black history as something living and evolving, rather than something confined to the past.”
Disclaimer: Cameron Greaves, who participated in the creation of this project, is affiliated with Cardinal Points. They are the Cardinal Points Graphics Editor.
