Harriet Fraser and Rob Fraser
Somewhere, Nowhwere Collective
2025-2025 International Artist in Residence | Cumbria, England, U.K.
Pando: A System of Energy
Our journey to Pando for the residency began back in 2018 when we first began our research and planned a visit. In 2019 we met Pando for the first time, in the company of Nick Mustoe, who was then the head forester. It was Nick who introduced us to Lance Oditt and the Friends of Pando. From this point, so much has spun around Pando, a kind of quiet, persistent energy. Our conversations with Lance have wandered joyfully over the years, and brought us the opportunity to come back to Pando as artists in residence: not just to be with the tree, to notice, to listen, to feel, but also to explore and play, creatively, and begin a new conversation spurred on by visual art and poetry.
Making Plans
We knew we had a limited amount of time with Pando (how we wish we could return every month, and watch the changes of the seasons) so we wanted to arrive with the foundations of an idea. As we planned what we might do, we asked ourselves, what might we use to expand our noticing? How might our curiosity, and the addition of our own marks, help us meet the tree, gently and purposefully, and alter the way we experience it, even if for a short while?
Building on previous work we’ve done with trees and cloths, we came up with a plan to locate seven sets of seven Pando stems, and wrap each set in a band of cloth, using the 7 colours of the rainbow. So when we arrived in Pando in September 2025 our bags were bulging with 49 metres of cloth – 7 metres (22.9 ft.) of each colour, cut to a width of 60 cm (23.6 in). We also travelled with our poem canvas, which measures 2.5 x 2.5 metres (8.2 ft. x 8.2 ft.). Unsure how this plan might play out, at least we started somewhere!
The first wrapping....
For our first wrapping, we walked in with all seven colours, waiting to see which would feel appropriate for the site. We walked through an area of Pando where the stems are young and slender, an area that was cut back in 1992 and since has regenerated. We were surrounded by hundreds, maybe thousands, of stems, each flush with lemon-yellow leaves. Our world became yellow – aspen leaves forming a yellow canopy above us, and a carpet below. We chose to begin with the colour yellow.
Finding seven stems that could be wrapped took time: we needed to identify a cluster of seven trees where their distance from one another would be just right: not overlapping, but allowing the top level of the wraps to be in line. It was harder than we expected, and strangely satisfying once we’d done it.
It’s a sensual process, wrapping cloth around aspen stems. Cloth at heart height, body against stems, hands around them. Dust from the white bark painting my clothes. Rob guided the placement of cloths while looking through his camera to make sure that the alignment of trees and cloth would be represented in a 2D image. The act of making the image, using real film, is a slow one: capturing a temporary transformation, a memory held visually in a split second when light falls onto film. And after this, what follows is stillness, observing, and simply being with the tree, make our senses open to the energy of this place.
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A week of finding trees
Our week with Pando was one of joy and effort: what we call the graft of the craft. We covered a lot of ground, both to get a feel for the tree, and to find the clusters of stems that seemed ready to be wrapped. We developed a conversation with Pando, often greeting it, saying hello, apologising for our interference, and thanking it for letting us in and showing it ever new parts of itself. The additions of colour became like a dance.
After we took down the yellow cloths, we headed away from the area of regeneration into an older part of the tree: a tug uphill, over boulders, around juniper bushes, and over fallen logs. The next set of stems we found were old: thick stemmed, towering high, and with the leaves still on the turn from green to yellow.
Finding a set of seven trees that align is not straightforward: for some colours we hunted for 2 hours before settling on a septet. And then, attaching cloth to trees is not simple. We became used to the process, and after the first two wrappings, we fell into a kind of discipline, heading out from our camp early morning, and returning as the light faded. Sometimes the going was tough – a lot of clambering over boulders and fallen branches, and avoiding juniper. Sometimes it was slow and dreamy.
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Getting into our stride: the process of wrapping Pando's stems
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Rob's note, while photographing the Green installation
This is the first place that I, as a photographer, have become concerned about the issue of depth of field: the ability of the camera to show good focus between the closest stem and the stem furthest from me.
I stopped the lens down to f45, which is its smallest aperture, and felt confident that this would bring the full range into focus.
However, I wouldn’t know for sure until I had the developed negatives. The Horseman camera is large format (5×4 inches); the images I take with this are never the same as those shot with a digital camera. They remain hidden, held in the dark, until I arrive home and develop them.
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Why seven?
Our use of coloured cloth in temporary installations began with the project The Long View, in 2015-2017, and has been a feature of several projects since. The number seven is woven, as a significant number, into stories in cultures around the world. For us the symbolism of the colours is connected with the body’s chakras or energy centres, which were recognised in Indian yogic philosophy thousands of years ago. The chakras can be seen to represent different stages of personal and evolutionary development. For instance: red, the first chakra in the area of the perineum, is associated with coming into existence, finding roots; the fourth, green is connected with the heart, and with love and relationships; the seventh, violet, with imagination. The violet cloth was pale; and in bright light it was almost lost against the trunks. Its ephemeral nature felt fitting. The seventh, or crown chakra, is associated not just with imagination, but with the beginning of experiences that are beyond thought, beyond what is known or can be put into words – an opening to new possibilities and ways of being.
For us, the installations are an opportunity to engage meditatively with body-mind-spirit-place. At each different set of seven installations, we considered the symbolic association of that colour with a chakra – as a guide to questions and observations, but not as if in isolation. While each chakra has a quality that’s important, energy flows constantly through them all and they are inter-related. So too with Pando, a living system of energy, below and above ground, where roots, branches, stems and leaves are connected, and none are separate from soil, mycelia, air and light – or from the many insects, and animals (humans included) that pass through. This system of energy has much to teach us.
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Sitting with a tree - a note from Harriet
The practice of sitting with trees has been with me since I can remember. Sitting, eyes closed, body at rest, and really sensing the physical meeting points between my body and a tree, as well as the earth, rocks, twigs, leaves, air.
This form of stillness is a form of noticing; unhurried, the quieting of thoughts, and a way of listening in, or sensing, a tree.
Typically, this is a really grounding experience. And it brings a kind of openness – and sometimes questions arise, and find a response. I can never guess what a tree may reveal.
The Pando tree, rooted here millennia, has seen much, lived through epochs. To be still with it, utterly focused, is to be within, and open to, its energy for a brief moment.
Friends of Pando and the Protection Project
While we were in Pando the timing was perfect – we were able to join the celebration for the Pando Protection project, a gathering of folk who have all been working hard to learn more about Pando, take action to care for it, and have become ambassadors for this tree. We met up, again, with Nick Mustoe, and were introduced to ranchers and ecologists and foresters.
This event was a crucial part of our residency: a joyful community buzz, and a reminder of dedication and hard work. Here’s the graft that helps to ensure Pando is cared for. Whatever way each person relates to Pando, whatever their specialism, their care shows up.
The weather on the day was bright and sunny … except for the two hours of the gathering. Thank you to the clouds and weather fronts for switching the mood, throwing hailstones down, and leaving us with no choice but to get close and cosy under the gazebo. Although the original plans for an open air photo shoot weren’t fulfilled, it was a great way to meet people!
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The canvas
As well as travelling with 49 metres of coloured cloth, we carried our ‘poem canvas’, something we’ve been using since 2019, with different words depending on context. We found a perfect place to hang it (surprisingly, it’s not that easy!) where the young aspen stems are densely packed. Too many to count, all emerging from the vast and complex system of roots, fungi and earth; summing up our thoughts about Pando as the one and the many.
What's next
We returned from Pando with a collection of colour and monochrome real film images shot with the large format camera. Thankfully, we were able to navigate the hand-checking system to avoid x-ray exposure to the negatives on the journey, and we have a full set of images. We’ll be presenting these in a few different ways, depending on the exhibition context, and Rob’s looking forward to hand-printing a set using a liquid emulsion process. We will also be producing a hand-crafted book with a combination of images and poetry, which will be limited to an edition of 49.
That’s just the artwork. We carry with us the imprint of memories of Pando, and of the people we met there. We’re hoping that one day, we will be back.
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Epilogue
We think of data – or information – in many ways. We work with scientists whose data spreads across graphs and charts, we talk about data of the heart, we collect data through maps and tracks, we weave it into poems. We’ve returned from Pando with the cloths, in the sizes that we cut to fit the stems. Out of context, it’s interesting to see them … like a chart. We’re playing with what to do next. Ideas in process.
Bio
UK artists Harriet Fraser and Rob Fraser live in Cumbria, in the northwest of England. Their collaborative art practice, somewhere-nowhere, explores the nature and culture of place, with a particular concern about rural areas, complexity in ecosystems, and practices and
policies affecting land use and landscapes. Their practice includes poetry, photography, temporary and permanent land art, film and audio, as well as participatory events, and they work as documenters and consultants on research projects. Walking is a core element –
always slow, sometimes over a series of days, and often including meetings with local residents who are experts of their own places. Over the years, they’ve worked with many farmers and land managers; spending time with them, involved in their daily tasks, is a key part of the Frasers’ listening practice, as well as relationship-building and research.
In 2021, Harriet and Rob founded the PLACE Collective (People Land Art Culture Ecology) in association with the Centre for National Parks and Protected Areas at the University of Cumbria. This connects environmental artists with researchers, land users, NGOs and local
communities, and has more than 40 artist members. In 2023, the Frasers received the Royal Geographical Society’s Cherry Kearton Medal, for their discipline-crossing work in rural contexts. Harriet is currently engaged in PhD research, enquiring into Art, agency and action.
Friends of Pando is dedicated and working to educate the public, support research and preservation efforts and inspire stewardship of Pando, the world’s largest tree.
Friends of Pando is a proud partner of Pando’s public land stewards, Fishlake National Forest of the U.S. Forest Service, Department of Agriculture. Learn more about our partnership.
Friends of Pando and its partners are equal opportunity employers.
Just $18 a month supports work to ensure Pando can be enjoyed for generations to come. Make a one-time or, recurring tax deductible donation today.
Friends of Pando
PO Box 12
Richfield, UT, 84701
Phone: 435-633-1893
IRS EIN: 87-3958681
