Lucy Zhang

Since the original making of Memories on Ginkgoes, 2023-2024, I have continued to collect and stitch ginkgo leaves together whenever their falling season comes. These new iterations of the work in 2025 have expanded to engage with people around me and their lives in Pittsburgh.

I asked people to bring me fallen leaves from ginkgo trees that they somehow felt connected to or perhaps simply passed by often. We spoke about their relationship to the natural environment, considering how nature can be a witness and a vessel for memories, lives, and dreams; how do we know this land? how does this land know us? The works were later installed in places meaningful to my collaborators.

For Sarah, 2025

Ginkgo leaves, thread, acrylic on transparency, fishing line

Installed by the intersection of Elmer St. and Maryland Ave. in Shadyside, where Sarah often goes for short walks by their apartment.

For Nate, 2025

Ginkgo leaves, thread, inkjet on transparency, fishing line

Nate is a multi-disciplinary artist born and based in Pittsburgh, PA. One of his primary mediums is Photography, with a focus on harmony with the natural world. This installation features photographs of Nate's ongoing work As It Is, as well as other untitled images, that trace his entwined relationship with nature and image-making;

“These images were taken during slow walks, in the Pittsburgh area, and surrounding green spaces. Over the last seven years, two of my main focuses with image-making have been traveling without leaving the Pittsburgh Area, and the sacred, ethereal, and primordial essence of the land on which we walk~ here in the city.

The idea of traveling while home has become one of the foundations of my image-making over the past seven years, becoming more intimate with the land around me by adopting eyes that are foreign to my everyday environment, as if I were a traveler in a new place. This has allowed me distance from the ordinary to be able to see things in their wholeness.

My primary premise has been reflecting on the primordial, the original, the before, prior to these locations ever having names, before humans left any significant footprint on the planet on which we live.

Thinking about the primordial opens the door to seeing where we are in history, and I’ve found it increasingly challenging to ignore the damage done to the ever-giving environment with which we coexist.”

Nate's ongoing work is to be In rhythm with the Earth, not against.

Frick Park was chosen as the final installation location as a place of solace and comfort for Nate.

Thanks for reading and looking! My dream is to fill the city each fall with ginkgos and stitches and shadows and stories that remind us of all the ways we are bound to each other and grounded by the land.

Take care, and see you next ginkgo season :) <3