Deciphering Words in the Woods

November 25, 2020– “Ogham is the oldest form of writing in Ireland. Dating back to the 4th century, it is often affectionately called the tree alphabet. It is an archaic script using trees as letters. In Ogham, the characters were called feda trees or branching nin branches because of their shape. Amazingly, this ancient alphabet was written from the roots up – each character sprouts from a central line, like leaves on a stem or branches on a tree. ” Artist Katie Holten seeks to decolonize language and revitalize imagination by transforming letters into trees. Combining the ancient Ogham script with Irish and English, his Irish Tree Alphabet transforms words into an arboreal language of place and belonging. (186 reads)

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