An Appeal to Heaven

Several years ago, I fell in love with a white pine outside the print shop at Oxbow, where I was co-teaching a two week class. Making watercolor monoprints with its actual branches and then using the needles to make white pine infused honey. Printing three links of chain on top in varnish, not knowing that in the 1700s all of the white pines claimed by George III in colonial New England were marked with the “King’s Broad Arrow,” a series of three hatchet slashes.

By the late 17th century, the British had completely deforested their own land and began harvesting and exporting eastern white pines from colonial New England. In order to provide masts for their massive navy of wooden ships, King George III laid claim to any white pine measuring 24 inches or more in diameter in 1691 and any white pine measuring 12 or more inches in 1722. The Pine Tree Riot was an act of resistance against British royal authority undertaken by settlers colonizing the unceded land of the Wabanaki, N’dakina, and Pennacook Peoples, in what is now known as Weare, New Hampshire, on April 14, 1772. Nearly two years before the Boston Tea Party, surveyors attempting to enforce the laws were severely beaten by colonists who disguised themselves as Native Americans, sinking their boats, and whipping them with long pine branch poles. To the settlers on stolen land, the pine tree became a symbol of resistance to colonization and a desire for independence.

An Appeal to Heaven includes documentation of a ritual performed less than 20 miles from the site of the Pine Tree Riot, prints, and magic made from fallen pine tree branches at my mother’s house.

In their research-based transdisciplinary practice, Vin Caponigro blends accessible and egalitarian concepts with ritual and performance to explore ideas of restriction and reproduction through writing, performance, and the creation of multiples. Caponigro’s research includes how those in power have used storytelling and reproducible media to control history, and how marginalized communities have used independent publishing to tell their own stories and fight back against oppressive systems. Caponigro has attended residencies in Estonia, Sicily, Italy, and the United States, including Zygote Press, ACRE, Wassaic Project, Art Center Padula, and Women’s Studio Workshop. In addition to solo exhibitions in Chicago and Baltimore, Caponigro’s work has been included in two-person and group exhibitions at the International Print Center NY, Chicago Cultural Center, Beverly Art Center, Highland Park Art Center, Chicago Artist Coalition, and the Nemeth Art Center. Caponigro currently lives and works on occupied
Narragansett, Wampanoag, and Pokanoket land (so-called Providence RI) where they operate Snake Hair, an independent publisher of zines and ritual multiples.

Cover image: Vin Caponigro, MATER MATUTA, video, 2024 (via YouTube)