Introducing Myrtle Tree Arts

Hello Friends of the Arts,

We want to share a bit about ourselves, our vision and purpose with you in this first post.
We're a collaborative group of artists, musicians, and experimenters seeking to create and elevate cultural activities through communal participation in the California Foothills and beyond. 
We, the co-founders, Paul Godwin and Ameera (Amee) Godwin, and along with longtime partner composer, Miguel Noya, are building on 
artistic efforts over the last decade--from hosting Talking Tree Ranch Artist Residencies to performing concerts in California and in Europe, we're continuing on a journey into the spirit of creative evolution through this new venue for collaboration. 

We welcome you to this venture in intentional creativity with community members as fellow artistic inventors. 

Join us and learn more! 

Email us: myrtletreearts@gmail.com

Insta: @myrtletreearts

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Life After Smoke and Char

A recent classroom-based workshop on Prescribed Burning was my first immersion into learning about fire behavior and concepts rooted in science, law, and practice on the ground. Beneficial Disturbance. Heat Management. F.R.I. for Fire Return Interval. Learning about burning and its connections to culture and biodiversity was a first step toward overcoming my own negative perceptions about fire. The course was led by experts Chris Paulus and Cordi Craig of Placer County, and coordinated by Kestrel Grevatt and the American River Conservancy, and emphasized the benefits of careful, legal burning. We were introduced to fuels and forest types, fire and wind behavior, state statutes and personal liabilities, Indigenous cultural burning and native plant adaptation. The experience was surprisingly rich. “The forest has memory,” announced Chris, a well-spoken and commanding retired CAL FIRE Battalion Captain. “The forest has to be allowed to remember itself.” I’m going to borrow that, I th

Creating Music for FIRE/LAND

Paul Godwin & Miguel Noya (Dogon) Music for FIRE/LAND: Knowing the Territory has been a huge part of the creation process for this "Art Rock Opera for the Forest." We began with a gorgeous and somewhat somber composition that came about in 2018 when Miguel Noya, the Venezuelan electronic composer attended our artist residency at Talking Tree Ranch in Placerville. The composition is routed in a repeating piano pattern nested rhythmically in the key of C# minor. There is an interwoven melody taken up by piano, then violin and finally a synthesizer enters with a counter theme - swirling, gorgeously rising with an inherent longing and perhaps, sadness. The piece was not released until now, when it found a home in the opening FIRE/LAND Overture – recast as “Whichever Way the Wind Blows.” The piano ostinato will return again as a foundation for “A Moral Dilemma” and then “We All Play a Part” as our Finale. How does one create music for an “art rock opera for the forest”? A

Ramparts: Centrum Artist Residency, Part 2

Arriving at Fort Worden sent me on a hunt about fortification history and architecture. Following trails through the woods to the top of Artillery Hill, Paul and I encounter the ramparts, solidly built gun emplacements known here as “batteries.” “Bulwark” is another term that feels related to the work from my first week at Centrum: large pencil drawings of entangled old growth cedar and spruce branches and roots. The “bul-” part of bulwark is related to bole, “tree trunk,” while -wark is related to English work, wrought, and wright. The last of the guns at the fort were removed in 1945, and the defunct battery enclosures, tunnels, stairwells, rusting doors and pipes, lichen-stained concrete, a stately sign with the name, Cornelius Tolles, a captain who died from his wounds in a Civil War battle—comprise these eerie tombs. We start to hymn and sing into the dark reverberating chambers. “What a performance venue!”, our eyes circling in their sockets as we imagine the possibilities. May

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