Tag: Sky Garden STX

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The Saman Tree Speaks

There’s a Saman Tree at Sky Garden Retreat that has been calling out quietly for years.

Its wide, sheltering canopy hums with memory. Its roots grip the land like knuckles holding on to something sacred. When the wind moves through its branches, it feels like a whisper, like someone long gone is trying to tell me something important.

This tree is not just a tree. It is a witness. A keeper of stories. A sentinel for the land and the lives that have passed through it.

I’ve invited the team from the Black Heritage Tree Project to visit Sky Garden and meet the Saman Tree for themselves. They are here on St. Croix mapping and honoring the trees that have borne witness to Crucian history, especially the brutal and beautiful legacy of Black freedom, survival, and spirit.

There’s also an old gravity-fed well tucked into the ghut below, mostly hidden now by vines and time. But it’s there. Like the tree, it’s part of a story that refuses to be forgotten.

I don’t know everything this tree has seen, but I know how it makes me feel: grounded, protected, watched over. I know that when I stand beneath its limbs, I feel connected to something much older than myself, something enduring.

This visit isn’t about documentation alone. It’s about reverence. Listening. Remembering. And sharing space with something ancient that still lives and breathes beside us.

If you’ve ever loved a tree, you know what I mean.

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Inspired By: A Flipbook Machine

Each morning at Sky Garden STX, I step out onto the deck of my studio and let the sounds of the island caress me. The pearly-eyed thrashers call first—raspy, relentless, full of attitude. They dart through the trees like mischief in motion. Then the doves join in, their coos low and mournful, like lullabies passed down from long ago.

I listen.

Their chorus is not just background noise. It’s an invocation. The rhythm of wings, the hush between calls, the way the birds stake hold of space with sound. It’s music. It’s memory.

The birds are teaching me to pause, to trust the silences between gestures. To let motion emerge from stillness.

I’ve started wondering: What does it look like to be guided by birds? Not as subject matter, but in process, in tempo, in spirit? I’m not sure yet. But recently I came across a flipbook machine by J.C. Fontanive, the way it cycles through images of birds in flight—over and over, rhythmic, hypnotic, alive—it mirrors what I feel on the deck each morning: movement as meditation. Repetition as revelation.

I don’t know exactly where this is going. But I do know that before I pick up any materials, I always listen first. To the wind. To the wings. To the wild logic of song.

Let’s see what unfolds.

J.C. Fontanive

Ornithology L, 2018

four-color screen print on Bristol paper, stainless steel, motor and electronics

5.25 x 4.25 x 4 inches

Edition of 20, plus 2AP