ARTWORK > To Talk About Trees

To Talk About Trees | The Common Well, Boise, ID | June 5th-July 24th, 2026

Kirsten Furlong is a multidisciplinary artist whose drawings and installations, in her words, “consider the ecological and poetic bonds humans share with animals and plants on lands that we collectively inhabit.” Her solo exhibition, To Talk About Trees, includes monumental and richly detailed works on paper alongside intimate, hand-stitched explorations on felt and linen. The title for the exhibition was inspired by the 1991 poem “What Kind of Times Are These” by American poet and essayist Adrienne Rich, who was reacting to German playwright Bertolt Brecht’s 1939 poem “To Those Who Follow in Our Wake.” Rich and Brecht, each in their own way, were addressing the dark days of our shared human histories. Rich chose to talk about trees, while Brecht posited that a “conversation about trees is almost a crime… For in doing so we maintain our silence about so much wrongdoing.” Furlong, with the viewpoint of a mixed race woman in the American West, examines political and environmental injustices through her art by employing images of flora and fauna that “serve as both emblems of nature and as metaphors for human desires.”

Creation of the works in the exhibition was supported by Alexa Rose Foundation, the School of the Arts at Boise State University, the Department of Art, Design and Visual Studies at Boise State University, the Barry Lopez Foundation for Art & Environment, Chalk Hill Artist Residency program, The Common Well, Gallery One Visual Arts Center and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.