KNOCK ON WOOD — Spring 2025

Journal Entry: 5/13/2025

Superstition

I have painted a picture of a ghost
Upon my kite,
And hung it on a tree.
Later, when I loose the string
And let it fly,
The people will cower
And hide their heads,
For fear of the God Swimming in the clouds.

— Amy Lowell

The concept for Knock on Wood was born many seasons ago. It emerged almost fully fledged from our Snake Eyes Collection in the Spring of 2023, but then went dormant again as some ideas tend to do. We were newly exploring ideas of luck and enchantment, and the phrase “knock on wood" germinated something that felt like it could have strong roots. But, it quickly became clear that the idea wasn’t ready. To bear fruit it needed tending and the right conditions.

Curating a show about luck is interesting because it requires considering fortune as well as misfortune. And if we are going to be honest, at points, Knock on Wood felt cursed — like it was mired in something that just didn’t want to be moved. As makers, we know that this kind of energetic resistance doesn’t correlate to end results. Certain creative acts feel like being carried downhill, while others are uphill the whole way.

What are these invisible lines of energy that are sometimes pushing sometimes pulling? Are these the “winds of fate”? Is there something metaphysical happening? Is luck real? And if it is can we come into contact with it? Brush up against it? Touch it even, and change our destiny? That is, in essence, what the exhibition asks. And the phrase “knock on wood” offers up an answer…

If luck is real, one way to come into contact with it is to touch a tree. 

There is an old belief that spirits dwell within trees, and that to knock upon wood is to wake them and ask for favor, protection, or grace. Imagine the grandeur of an old growth forest, or the powerful limbs of an oak tree and that belief is understandable. Whether you call it superstition or sacred instinct, this belief speaks to a deeper kinship: between the human body and the living world it touches. It recognizes that to touch wood is to connect with something much larger and much older than oneself.

Just how much older, and how much bigger depends on the tree. At their most extreme, trees easily engulf us. At this moment in time, there is a Great Basin Bristlecone Pine tree named Methuselah growing in eastern California that is estimated to be 5,000 years old (coinciding with the end of the stone age), and a Quaking Aspen Clone named Pando growing in Utah that is estimated to be between between 9,000 and 16,000 years old (coinciding with the end of the ice age). 

These figures are hard to comprehend. What have these trees witnessed over their lives thus far? What luck have they found in their many millennia or many centuries alive on Earth? 

We will tell you this, and would wager that in their own way the other creators in this show would say something similar. Working with wood, being in the presence of a tree, living or passed, will teach you patience. It will slow your human rhythm down and require you to tap into a different flow. Trees will teach you resourcefulness. They will teach you about beauty and about timing. They will teach you about collaboration and labor and deep roots and strong arms. They will teach you that luck is real, because storms are strong and change is a constant and sometimes the best you can do is hold on tight and bend and breath and call on those things much older and wiser to guide you through.

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