"Tree Pieces: Painted Fabric Collages" by Merill Comeau, opened last week at the Hunnewell Visitor Center of the Arnold Arboretum. The setting is the perfect venue for Comeau’s beautiful and breathtaking fabric collages, which explore the natural world.

Comeau has an original and highly personal working method. Her mixed-media pieces are made with a palette of recycled fabrics ranging from cleaning rags and donated clothing to discontinued fabric samples, vintage linens, and nylon net bags that package fruits and vegetables.

“The net bags work almost like crosshatching in my work,” she explained. “I source the materials for my work from a lot of places.”

Comeau finds that “working in fabric has opened up her palette.”  She keeps the myriad scraps  at her home “folded, stored, and separated by style and color.” 

The artist then paints and prints on the material.  “Old men’s shirts that have been washed a lot work great since they really soak up paint,” she noted.  The raw materials of her craft are then constructed into collages that she draws on with thread.  The resulting large-scale works are a brilliant blend of patterns, prints, and textures.

Comeau explained that her work “honors the tradition of women working in fabric.”  She was influenced in part by the “Pattern and Decoration” movement of the 1970’s.  The artist also participated in “The Faith Quilt Project,” which was led by Clara Wainwright.

As the West Concord resident writes in her artist statement, her work “examines themes of decline, regeneration and bloom." She creates “a utopian Garden of Eden for tomorrow out of the refuse of today.”  Fittingly, for the Arboretum gallery and as the show’s title suggests, many of Comeau’s images are of trees.

“Out My Window: Dusk” pays homage to autumn, a subject the artist returns to repeatedly.  The grey-greens, dusty purples, and burnt oranges of the work perfectly depict the somber and resplendent colors of a November evening.  The piece is made from a variety of materials including discarded fabric samples, painted recycled cloth, commercial fabrics, thread, and stitching.  A gnarled, off-center tree forms the collage’s main element, reflecting her attention to formal landscape composition.

“I think about the origins of landscape painting and concepts like perspective,” she said.  In her work, “the viewer is small and the landscape is big.”

“Integration,” features a zebra-printed tree trunk, and captures the bright reds and oranges of New England’s fall foliage earlier in the season.  The diptych “Out From Under” shows a cascading arrangement of brilliant leaves either floating or reflected on the surface of a watery pool.

"In Between Nests” is one of a series created by the artist.  The fabric collage is more quilt-like, highly textured, and three-dimensional, than some of the other works.  The focus of the boldly stitched work is a nest made mostly of raffia.  The various scraps that Comeau utilizes in the piece recall the working methods of birds themselves, plucking twigs, grass, and other assorted remnants of nature. 

“Arnold Arboretum Bamboo Grove” was created on site.  The artist said that she often “carries a backpack of fabrics” with her.  “My daughter was collecting leaves for a botany project,” she said. “I spread out at a beautiful spot near some low growing bamboo” not far from the Arboretum Gallery.  “Though it’s hard to work out doors since fabric is light and gets blown by the wind,” she added.

Made largely from deconstructed denim, “Return to the East" is the centerpiece of the exhibit. The work is comprised of three floor-to-ceiling fabric panels, showing a trio of trees. Stacks of blue jeans, as neatly folded as one would find at a Levi’s store, The Gap, or a Calvin Klein boutique, are carefully placed on the floor near the monumental piece.  Comeau explained the title is derived from the biblical story of Cain, who was banished from Eden after killing his brother. It represents, she said, “the damage done to the environment by materialism and consumerism.”

Tree Pieces: Painted Fabric Collages by Merill Comeau will be on view until April 24 at the Arnold Arboretum in the Hunnewell Visitor Center's Lecture Hall. 

The Hunnewell Visitor Center's normal operating hours 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. on weekdays; 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. on Saturdays, and noon – 4 p.m. on Sundays.  (Due to other events at the facility, it is advised that you call 617.384.5209 for exhibition availability.) 

Merill Comeau will discuss her work at an artist talk at the Arnold Arboretum on Wednesday, March 30 from 6:30 – 8 p.m.