The Forest Sentinels Sculptures
At the heart of our project are The Forest Sentinel sculptures. Each sculpture focuses on a different tree from our "not likely to adapt to climate change" list, and juxtaposes imagery from ancient Greecian and Roman pillars with root forms and castings of tree bark from actual trees. Pull quotes from oral history interviews with local people, trivia about each species, beautiful carvings, and patches of bark texture cast from actual trees create multiple opportunities for audiences to interface with project content.
Creating the Sculptures
Over the course of 6 months more than 50 people participated in the Forest Sentinels Project. In addition to the artists from our class at Shawnee State University, guest artists from the Trillium Project and from other regions helped to create the sculptures. In addition to these contributions, Heidi Bender Kauffman (lead artist) and Elliot Cade (student lead) spent hundreds of hours in the summer of 2025 creating the sculptures.
