In early 2024, artist Jean Shin began posting photos of weathered, moss-laden pieces of wood, coyly proclaiming in the caption that she was “hosting a forest” in her studio this winter. Working on her next commission, an ambitious site-specific installation titled Perch, Shin was reimagining wooden fence posts made from American chestnut trees on Appleton Farms, a property owned and operated by the Trustees in Ipswich, Massachusetts. A project over four years in the making, the posts will become an expansive public art installation that doubles as a temporary resting site for migrating bobolinks as they settle in for their mating and nesting season. For human visitors, Shin is creating unique sculptural interventions in the landscape out of fallen and dead trees that serve as platforms for engaging
with the farm’s grasslands and safely observing the bobolinks during their time at Appleton...
