Seeing through Birch Eyes

The tale of a doll, a tree, ice-age visions and glaciers

One from the Archive from 2024

I’m starting this series off with a doll that’s half made and has been hanging on my wall for a good few months. The spark of inspiration to maker her began last year after a walk, when I was very taken by the number of Birch tree eyes watching me.

I had been gathering some fallen branches from under the tree, to use in the body of the doll.

All seeing Birch eyes

She is by far the tallest doll I have ever made at 36 inches / 91 cm. She has sat through an autumn, winter and it’s only now, just as the tree herself comes alive again, that this doll has begun speaking to me once more through images and visions.

Birches are pioneer trees as they are one of the first to establish themselves on new ground and would have been one of the first trees to grow on this land after the ice retreated.

Seeing Through Birch Eyes

Birch is often called the Lady of the Woods, and she has let me see through her eyes. I’ve seen the land reemerge with the end of the last ice age, as she and her kin arrived through seeds that birds brought in. Her visions showed the land changing and morphing in the great renewal, a new beginning. Interestingly enough this land is still rising from the great weight of the ice:

During the last ice age Scotland, like much of northern Europe, was covered with ice. The weight of this huge compacted ice sheet pushed the Earth's crust down, causing the land levels to sink. Over the 14,000 years since the ice sheet melted, Scotland has been rising an average rate of 1-2mm per year. - Glasgow University

Exploring the Vatnajokull Glacier, Iceland

I almost studied Glaciology at University, but after a year of Geology I opted instead for Human Ecology - choosing Ecopsycholgy and Spiritual Activism.

And so the story of the Birch, ties into her ancestors who were the first to take root in reemerging land. I have an image of her as the white lady, with glaciers miles and miles to the North, and her and her kin a forest of start white trunks, with black all seeing-eyes.

Next up for the doll will be working with some white fabric. I don’t want to give her a face - or at least not a human face. I thought maybe one large birch eye on her face, created by stitching on small birch twigs.

She is a tree of renewal and new beginnings and has somehow woven in old threads of mine into her story - from my visit to Iceland and the poetry that I used to write about the power of glaciers.

I recreate the landscape, make new mountains. Unconquered, uncharted, your maps will be useless.

Minus 31. ‘Zine. 1999.

A couple of sketches designing her clothing