Carlisle Robinson

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I was looking up if it’s possible to draw / write on the white birch bark. It is! People have been writing on it as early as 1st century CE in what is now Afghanistan, and also used in India, Russia, Finland and Estonia. [source 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birch_bark_manuscript ]

My favourite one has to be the drawings made by Onfim, a boy of around 6-7 years old who lived in Novgorod Republic (now part of Russia). See image #1. He even drew himself as “a beast with a long neck, pointy ears, and a curly tail. The beast either has an arrow with feathers in its mouth or is spewing fire; one of the accompanying texts says “I am a wild beast”. [source 1]

Onfim’s writing exercises inspired me to try to write and draw on birch as writing exercises for ASLwrite. So I decided to order white birch bark sheets! I bought it from sellers in northern Quebec, who are a father and a daughter. They sell items they found in their expeditions in nature. https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/Borealistic#about

See image 2.

I set out to play with some sheets that might not be ideal for final products.  Here’s what I discovered. See image 3.

I have old clay tools from my grandma. I thought it’d be great for scratching into the bark. I played around with different endings of the tools. I found that ones with more blunt endings are better as the bark can be fragile and rip easily.

Pencils worked great on it, especially softer ones like 4B. Harder ones would just rip through the layer(s). I have to draw gently to avoid ripping through.

I tried pen- works great, but I feel it’s too strong / pops out too much. See image 4.

I also tried a gold pencil. It worked great with bringing in a bit of warm brown.

The brown markings were from using clay tools. Grey markings meant it was drawn with pencil.

On the bottom left of the image 5, you can see a tree with leaves falling. These are actually coloured pencils, but I found that colours don’t show very well on birch barks. Interesting.

Also, sometimes with a lot of pencil drawing, it becomes too reflective / metallic, making it harder for me to see it, and I had to move bark to reduce light reflection. So it made me consider carefully how to shade / darken without too much reflections. I played with a dark brown pencil and it works better.

I practiced shading with eyes in the middle of the bark in the image #5. I ripped through the paper, and tried to fill in, but didn’t succeed. It is harder to have consistent shade, but that’s okay!

So, on the middle bottom of the image #5, I played with the idea of drawings on top layer (white bark) interacting with below layer(s). Both persons are holding the edge of white, acting as if they’re pulling the white part away to reveal the brown layer.

I tried to see if I can lift up one layer without ripping it apart, so I can have it as a ‘flap’, and draw beneath. But, as you can see, the guy next to the tree had a chunk ripped away. It is indeed very fragile.

Yet, the drawing / writing impressions on the bark can be preserved for thousands of years. It is both fragile and not fragile!

My pencil drawing based on Paper Birch, as well as my previous post. In the illustration, a person is sitting in front of a window that overlooks a Paper Birch tree. The person is holding a book, made of pulp wood from the tree, sitting in a chair made of the tree. Next to them is a dresser and a spoon made of the tree. 

Photo By InAweofGod'sCreation - 13. The Fall of Acadia, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49917591

My metaphor is Paper Birch tree, scientific name Betula papyrifera.

It is native to Canada and New England, my birthplace, but can be found in Indiana as well, my home state. I grew up with one in my backyard in Indiana. When I was a child, I was fascinated with the peeling bark and would play with it.

The bark has to fall away in order for it to continue growing. The tree has various uses for nature:

• Wintertime food for moose
• Fall time food for white tailed deers
• Bark is a nutrient for porcupines and beavers
• Seed nourishes many small birds and mammals
• Home for eggs of insects including Birch Skeletonizer (a type of moth with an amazing name, named for how the caterpillars eats the leaves)

And for humans:

• Furniture including boxes, cartons, tables
• Pulp wood for paper making
• Tools like sled, bows, snowshoes, etc
• Birch syrup
• Fire starter (it is great for starting fire, but it will burn quickly not lasting long)
• Roof for sod-roofed houses
• Reforesting area, as it is resilient and fast growing
• Art of birchbark biting used by several Indigenous peoples

Paper birch trees thrive in cool weather areas AND areas where trees were removed through wildlife, avalanche, or deforestation. They were often use as the initial wave of reforestation.

Also, if there’s a fire, the well-watered paper birch trees won’t get burned easily. It can disperse seeds for the future generation to quickly grow in the initial aftermath.

And, the paper birch trees communicate not only with each other but with others.

Researcher Suzanne Simard, a Canadian forestry scientist, discovered that paper birch and Douglas fir trees were using an underground network to interact with each other. These trees, along with other trees, form a symbiotic association with below-ground fungi. Suzanne said “They compete with each other, but our work shows that they also cooperate with each other by sending nutrients and carbon back and forth through their mycorrhizal networks…The more Douglas fir became shaded in the summertime, the more excess carbon the birch had went to the fir. Then later in the fall, when the birch was losing its leaves and the fir had excess carbon because it was still photosynthesizing, the net transfer of this exchange went back to the birch.” [source]

What really stood out to me is that Paper birch competes with Douglas fir, but they also cooperate. Competition does not mean a negative thing. We compete by pushing each other to do our best, to have fun, AND work together.

In Deaf arts community, some artists are afraid of competitions. If another artist in the same town does similar art practices (obviously not plagiarism. Just similar art genre using same / similar medium. Example, two earring makers who create earrings from clay who live near each other), they sometimes feel like it becomes a bad competition, that it’ll hurt their chances of commissions, recognition, income, etc. “This town ain’t big enough for both of us” mentality, if you will.

But in actual, people are thrilled to have more arts by Deaf artists! And, by working together, we will thrive even more.

Also, it is good that the animals are able to enjoy Paper Birch trees. Moderation is the key. If the tree gave too much of itself to the creatures, it can lead to the death of the tree. The paper birch tree is able to alleviate some of that by allowing its bark to be peeled away. Help from humans is appreciated as well as long as the humans respect the nature’s need to nurture each other. And, having more paper birch trees mean there are more to go around. Critters can sample and eat a bit from each trees, thus preventing over-consumption of one tree.

One more thing I really appreciate about the Paper Birch trees is that they’re flexible. Their branches can bend without breaking. It is useful when there’s a lot of snow or strong wind. We all know this famous quote, “A tree that cannot bend will crack in the wind.”

So to put this all together, I create a pencil drawing based on Paper Birch, as well as my previous post. In the illustration, a person is sitting in front of a window that overlooks a Paper Birch tree. The person is holding a book, made of pulp wood from the tree, sitting in a chair made of the tree. Next to them is a dresser and a spoon made of the tree.

I was reading a book, “Deaf Artists in America: Colonial to Contemporary,” which features selections of Deaf artists throughout history of USA. One thing stood out to me was that in artwork in 1800s, Deaf artists often featured Deaf people with book or paper or pen.

My favourite is Augustus Fuller’s 1840 portraits of his Deaf school classmates, Elizabeth Stone Denny and Edwards Denny. Elizabeth is holding a book and a pen. Edwards is holding a pen. It is a way to say to the world, “Hey, we are educated and we can communicate.”

They went to the very first deaf school in North America, the American School for the Deaf. Augustus started the school only 7 years after the school was founded. He could’ve gone to school in Massachusetts but the deaf school was not established until 1868. Even better, he could’ve gone to one much closer his home. But that school, where I worked as a teacher aide, was not established until 1970.

Despite having lived for 10 years total in New England area, mostly in Massachusetts, I have never heard of this artist Augustus until last week.

How many more Deaf and disabled artists were lost in the history? How many had their disability erased or overlooked by the arts world?

But I will treasure any fragments of the Deaf and disability arts history. To me, I am warmed that, 185 years after the Augustus painting, we Deaf people still use paper / pen to communicate. Sure, using phones / computers are cool. But if we want to quickly communicate back / forth, paper and pen are still better. Sometimes, simpler things are better.

In my application to Sync, I wrote:

I’m looking for a fresh perspective. I want to learn from others about leading in the arts, especially in disabled arts. What strategies work? What doesn’t? What tools exist that could benefit our communities? How can I grow as a leader? How do we lead in difficult times while protecting our energy, balancing the weight of responsibility, and making tough decisions? Leadership in our context is not just about skills—it’s about resilience, accessibility, and community care. I’m ready to deepen my learning and bring that knowledge back to strengthen the Deaf and disabled arts sector.

This is a critical moment for disabled and Deaf communities to connect and collaborate more often. Deaf people bring a wealth of tools and knowledge; I know the broader disability community does too. I want us to work together to close the gap so that the well-known slogan in our communities, “The future is accessible,” can become “The present is accessible.”

And the first steps for us began on September 10th, with our first session together. I enjoyed it, especially learning more about the past of Sync, the folks involved in this project, and each other. We are trying to figure out how we will settle in this program.

As we discussed the different drivers, what motivates us, I found it interesting that a lot of us picked security as our top three drivers. As disabled artists, we often face insecurity and instability. Within Deaf community in Canada, 40% Deaf people are unemployed (compared to 6.9% of Canadians).* Those who are employed, often do not earn a living wage. Those who do earn a living wage, do not often earn enough to have more freedom to live the life they want. Those who are employed, often have a glass ceiling of audism and ableism pushing them down, preventing them from doing the jobs they truly love.

Wanting security is definitely not necessarily a bad thing! But the gap between our security needs and abled bodied artists’ security needs- it is huge. How can we change this? This is what’s been on my mind.

*Source: https://cad-asc.ca/our-work/employment-and-employability/