Art; Nature; Spirit – Forest Alchemy

FOREST ALCHEMY™ is a multi-disciplinary live art company producing interactive, site-specific works reflecting paradigm shifts in art, consciousness and culture. Founded by Tracy Ginsberg and Theodore Lillie with an interdisciplinary approach that combines installation, sculpture, video, photography, painting, drawing, sound and performance, FOREST ALCHEMY Live Art immerses viewers in transformational art in nature. FOREST ALCHEMY Art Park and Nature Preserve is headquartered in West Marin County on a developing 30 acre project space with a treehouse artist residency underway. Through honoring humanity, the creative spirit and our common mother, Mother Earth, FOREST ALCHEMY™ seeks redirection of consciousness toward self awareness, joy, compassion, love and sacred action.

We believe art and nature are paths to spiritual awakening. We promote “breathing from the tap”– walking in nature, connecting with plants and animals, stimulating the senses. We highlight iconic, natural images holding special significance within the human psyche. Our FOREST ALCHEMY™ work asks for joyful, open hearted interaction in service to personal discovery. FOREST ALCHEMY™ Interactive art, experienced through the prism of nature, drives both the subconscious to manifest love, healing and acknowledge what we intuit-all of life is connected and sacred. Through nature and art, we may achieve our highest potential– the mystical shift from merely human to the divinely human.

Forest Alchemy’s Story
Envisioning living and working in nature, Tracy Ginsberg and Theodore Lillie found serendipity: an old barn on a hilltop parcel adjoining San Geronimo Valley Open Space. The address– lot 43, their lucky number; carved on the front door– “T & T”, the Tracy/Theo monicker. Forest Alchemy was born.

Renovations began and continue today. In 2004, they mapped the 30 acre project space, built 3 miles of interlinking trail, renovated the barn, installed sculptures in the woods and meditative spaces in the trees, planted an edible organic garden, built a chicken coup and transformed re-purposed shipping containers into a studio shop. The project space debuted exhibitions in 2007 and has since developed a series of multidisciplinary installations and live art events for galleries, museums, performance centers, natural and urban spaces. Treehouse artist residency and ongoing project space are under development.

“Everything influences me and everything is art. I work this art growing within and simultaneously let it go. I stay open, flexible, experimental in developing art of spirit, nature and perception.”

Tracy Ginsberg is the Creative Director of Forest Alchemy. She fuses mediums, disciplines, form and content to create sculpture, installation, earthwork, painting, drawing, photography, video, textile and live art. Her work explores transformative process, sacred space, nature and the feminine divine. Her paintings have been exhibited in galleries, museums, universities and alternative spaces across the country. Selected venues include San Francisco Art Institute, GenArt, Dresden Gallery, SPUR Projects, Holter Museum of Art, Museum of Arts Downtown Los Angeles, Matrix Arts, University of Oregon, Toomey-Tourell Gallery, Soho 20. Ginsberg’s paintings belong to private, corporate and public collections, including University of Michigan, University Hospital Cleveland, Inhale Corporation and others. She has created original art and designs for UN Millennium Goals at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington DC, the film The Business of Being Born, He’Brew the Chosen Beer. She has been a contributing artist and writer for ReadyMade Magazine. Ginsberg was the founder and artistic director of Fulcrum Projects, an experimental, multi-disciplinary live art company in San Francisco 2002. Fulcrum Projects evolved into Forest Alchemy project space and production company, developed with Theodore Lillie in 2007. For more information visit www.tracyginsberg.com

“Dream big, walk softly, take flight and give what you want.”

Theodore Lillie is Forest Alchemy Technical Director. His art blends photography, collage, sculpture, installation and video with computer programming, solar design, industrial design, off-grid production and electrical engineering. He explores intersections of landscape, portraiture, human idiosyncrasy and natural phenomenon. For Lillie, an extreme athlete, motion is life and life is art. His work emerged while skateboarding San Francisco streets, driving back roads, cutting old imagery to weave into new work or using wire and steel to emphasize tension and balance. The physicality of dismantling parts to reinvent dialogue and context stimulates reappraisal of personal, natural and communal realities. Lillie’s photographs have been exhibited at San Francisco Art Institute, Smith Anderson North, Gen Art and belong to diverse private collections. As a professional photographer, his clients have included Ready Made Magazine, the Oakland Museum of California, Architects, Artists, Designers, Political Events and San Francisco Nightlife. He was the product photographer for San Francisco tech startup Branders and assistant to Dennis Hearne, political portrait photographer. Lillie was Fulcrum Projects Technical Director. In 2006 he developed Forest Alchemy with Tracy Ginsberg. For more information visit www.theodorelillie.com