8th District Artwork

"Branches & Sky" by Tobin Fraley as seen in the D.C. office.

Tobin Fraley is a local artist and photographer who recently published a book called 36 Acres.  It is a picture book of photographs he has taken in the Reed-Turner Woodland Nature Preserve that is located in Long Grove, Illinois which is in our IL- 8^th Congressional District.  Since Joe and I moved back to the district last year, I have been struck by the natural beauty of our surroundings.  I want to share with all in the 8^th Congressional District, and those from beyond our borders, the depth and breadth of this beauty.  We will be changing the artwork on the walls in the foyer of our Washington, DC office every quarter and are looking for artists from the district who might be interested in displaying their work for all to see.  Hope you enjoy viewing what our district looks like as captured by the many talented artists from Illinois’ 8th Congressional District -Helene Miller-Walsh

Currently on Display is a Triptych called “Branches & Sky” by Tobin Fraley

            Perspective: In 1956 I was five years old.  In 1956 a grand white oak on Guy Reed’s property was 280 years old.  At five years old, that same oak was already twelve fee tall and stretching towards the sky; Jacques Marquette was paddling his canoe up the Chicago River; the Algonquins had heard of the light-skinned fur traders and some had even seen them; the American Revolution was still 100 years away; and Johann Sebastian Bach was yet to e born.

            So even though a tree does not consciously note the passing of time, nor does it record or even care about the events of human history, it was there. The same air that rushed through its branches fanned the flames of the Great Chicago Fire, the same rain clouds that soaked its roots washed the ground at Gettysburg in 1863, and the same sun that nourished the leaves of this great tree warmed the hands of the young boy who was to become my grandfather.

            Now the same tree allows me to sit by its side, to rest in its shade, to write, to imagine and to remember

The Artist - Tobin Fraley:

Born in 1951 Tobin spent his first ten years in Seattle, Washington.  Since Seattle he has lived in Berkeley, California, New York City, Kansas City, Missouri and currently resides in Long Grove, Illinois where he and his wife Rachel own Woodland Grove Gallery.  He is the author of three books on the history of Carousels along with a holiday children’s story titled, A Humbug Christmas.  Fraley currently teaches photography at the Chicago Botanic Garden.

For more information regarding Tobin’s work and the photographs on display go to www.36acres.comor contact the Woodland Grove Press, Long Grove, IL  at their website  info@woodlandgrovepress.com

Reed- Turner Woods, Long Grove, IL:

Compared to other nature preserves the thirty-six acres of the Reed-Turner Woodland is rather small. But the rich history of Reed-Turner Woodland, a 33-acre section of the original grove of oak and hickory trees for which Long Grove was named, packs a magnificent punch.  Woodchip footpaths diverge from the nature center, ideal for birding, photography, and nature walks. The North Ridge Trail runs along a moraine, through oak woodland and then open bur oak savanna. The trail then crosses Indian Creek over a wooden boardwalk.   The South Ridge Trail passes through a forest of red oak and sugar maple, then back over the wet meadow. From the South Ridge Trail, the Pond View Trail continues to a bur and scarlet oak savanna. On a hot summer day, visitors can cool off in the lake breeze beside Reed Pond, an eight-acre bay of the much larger Salem Lake. The trail continues through a prairie opening and back into oak woodland.

The central ravines are in the eastern part of the Valparaiso Moraine that was originally carved out by receding glaciers nearly ten thousand years ago.  This moraine now separates the valleys between the Upper Des Plaines and the Fox River systems in northeastern Illinois.  The south branch of Indian Creek, also known as Kildeer Creek, flows through this portion of southern Lake County bordered by a wide section of ample floodplain for the rising waters that engulf the stream corridor during the year.  This “long grove” region is part of the Chicago area’s oak-hickory forests that was one of a number of forest pockets originally surrounded by seas of prairie grasslands. Prior to European settlement, oak savannas covered approximately 27-32 million acres of the Midwest from Texas to Minnesota to Ohio.  Old McHenry road, on the east, was an Indian trail, a route probably used by French traders, that later  became a major thoroughfare for settlers who traversed the Long Grove area in the early 1800’s and settled here in the 1840”s

Reed Pond and Salem Lake, border the southwest section of the site. These are two portions of a man-made lake that were created around the 1930’s.  Reed Pond was made by damming an area of a former marsh near where the Guy Reed family established a country home.

There are several ecosystem habitats that make up Reed-Turner Woodland.  These generally include upland and lowland oak woodland and more open oak savanna communities, a ridge of maple woods, wet bottomland woods, prairies, wetland floodplain and marsh.  Understory shrubs are present in some areas but conspicuously absent in others because of heavy deer browsing and the historic clearing of invasive buckthorn over the past 50 years.  Hazelnut was present here at the time of the 1838 original land survey which shows settlement of the land, but the shrubs disappeared with lack of fire management and increased human and deer populations. 

For more information please contact the Long Grove Park District (847) 438-4743