JWA: Your solo show, YOU ARE HERE, opens today at the Nancy Hoffman Gallery in New York City! The art includes beautiful tree ring sculptures which you interpret through a feminist lens—tell us more about this project. 

Tiffany Shlain: Yes, very excited to have YOU ARE HERE open in NYC! In the show, I explore how going back deep in time or nature changes your perspective of where we are today and gives insight on where we need to go. I have large-scale lightboxes, supergraphics, photography, and my tree ring history sculptures, which reimagine the traditional patriarchal history timelines you see at the entrance of national parks to consider what other histories can be told. In thinking of these trees bearing witness to humanity, I have sculptures in this exhibition that explore the evolution of our brains, flowers, the back-and-forth of war and peace, my own life in a tree ring self-portrait, and then Dendrofemonology: A Feminist History Tree Ring, which takes 50,000 years of feminist history and distills it down into 32 moments. It was first unveiled in San Francisco, then on the National Mall last fall, and will be on view at Madison Square Park on September 21 for A Mobilization of Women's Rights and the Planet. 

I would love any of you reading this to join me at the opening on September 5 or for this art and action event on September 21, or both. For [the latter event], we are inviting people to come wearing white, in solidarity for women’s rights, for a powerful program that starts in the Madison Square Park with speakers, followed by a walk through the High Line, then back to Nancy Hoffman Gallery, where I will be showing my new film about the ideas explored in the feminist history tree ring and giving an artist talk. We are at such a historic moment in our country, and having this sculpture in NYC right before the election feels very powerful.  

I also have many lightboxes in the exhibition which to me feel like this cinematic portal. Below is a large-scale Roe v Wade, which I made right after the Dobbs decision, thinking of so many women with nowhere to go. 

JWA: You and your husband, Ken Goldberg (an artist and professor of robotics at Berkeley, also have a joint exhibition opening at the Skirball Center in October for the Getty Museum’s PST ART: Art & Science Collide initiative, which includes two pieces with Jewish themes. What do these pieces mean to you?

TS: My husband Ken Goldberg and I have collaborated on a number of occasions in our 27 years together, exploring a range of topics from Jewish ideas and technology and AI. Our first collaboration was co-writing The Tribe: An Unauthorized, Unorthodox History of the Jewish People and the Barbie Doll…in 15 Minutes that premiered at Sundance in 2006.  

Our upcoming exhibition, Ancient Wisdom for a Future Ecology: Trees, Time and Technology, is our most comprehensive collaboration yet, with ten new works, sculptures, video art, and an AI interactive artwork. One of the tree ring sculptures is DendroJudaeologyple: A Timeline of the Jewish People that distills 5,000 years of Jewish history into 140 moments, burned onto a tree ring slice that is five feet in diameter. Sharing this larger context all in one place, on a piece of wood, shows something that our digital soundbite culture seems to have lost.

To compile the timeline, we spent the last two years writing, researching, and consulting with scholars and rabbis, then figuring out what we wanted to have in this history, the exact words, enough humor. It was all about what to leave in, what to take out. 

We started working on it long before October 7. As you can imagine, that tectonic shift made us think even more deeply about representing the ancient history of our people. We also learned so many things doing research. This entry is one of my favorites: “3500-1200 BCE Canaanites worship sacred goddess trees, asherim.” (That makes so much sense to me, feminist Jewess lover of trees!)  

I am just finishing burning the words into the wood via pyrography, an ancient art of burning into wood with a hot tip that sometimes gives off flames. It takes me hours and hours of focused attention each day. I love the smell. I love the meditative focus it requires. Like I am bearing witness to each moment. I think about people who copied the Torah over the generations, and all the time and attention that takes. too. Ken and I are really looking forward to sharing DendroJudaeology along with the other work when the show opens in LA at the Skirball Cultural Center on Oct 17. 

JWA: Much of your art incorporates materials from the natural world. What draws you to working with nature?

TS: I grew up near the great redwoods of Muir Woods [in California], and that was always a spiritual place for me. After more than a decade focusing on technology while founding and running the Webby Awards, especially after the iPhone debuted in 2007, my life just felt like going from screen to screen and working and being on 24/7. 

Then, after a dramatic series of events 15 years ago including losing my father and having my daughter born within days of each other, I knew I needed a drastic change. My family and I started unplugging from all screens one day a week for what we call our “Tech Shabbats.” It's been the best practice I have ever brought into my life. I ended up writing a book, called 24/6, about how transformative it has been for me and sharing how others can try it. 

I think Shabbat itself is the most brilliant idea of our people. Usually on those screen-free days, we spend a lot of time back in those trees in nature. That consistent time in nature gives me perspective I lose during the week online. During Covid, I spent even more time in nature and started to make physical art that was either brought back from the mountain near where I live or inspired by Muir Woods, which is home to some of the oldest trees in the world. Thinking of our place in the larger story of humanity and history is a lot of what this exhibition, YOU ARE HERE, is about. In terms of one’s personal life, we are only here for a short time. What are you going to do while you are here?

I also have a piece in the show that merges two of my favorite mediums, filmmaking and tree rings. I projected a short film I made onto a tree ring. Here is a still from it below, but at the gallery it will be in motion. I cannot wait for people to see this movement, the film projected onto the wood. Tears rolled down my face the first time I saw the film projected onto the wood. It brought so many ideas I have been exploring for the past 25 years together in a powerful visual way. The piece is called A Female Gaze Into History. This is what so much of my work is about.

And lastly, I wanted to share a piece I made right after Oct 7 that’s currently on view at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. It seems fitting to share with you all.  It’s called The Center Will Hold and it’s about the way my  identities have felt magnified since Oct 7th, especially being Jewish. And it holds me together. The words below are Earthling, Mother, Jewess, Feminist, American…in that order.

JWA: You mentioned your book, 24/6: Giving Up Screens One Day a Week to Get More Time, Creativity, and Connection, which is inspired by the practice of putting down technology for Shabbat. Do you see this practice as something spiritual, secular, or something in between?

TS: Something in between. It’s now been 15 years that we have done this form of Shabbat—always a great meal with family and friends on Friday night with candles and blessings and homemade challah and screens down. Then Saturday all day, we’re unplugged, usually in nature. It is the day I most look forward to each week to reconnect to myself, my family and something larger than myself which nature imbues. So all of those things. And it’s the day all of my creative ideas flow. 

JWA: You've produced art across a plethora of mediums, including written work, visual art, and award-winning films. How do you decide what medium to pursue when you have a creative idea? 

TS: That’s a great question. Different ideas inspire different mediums for me. And many times I’m exploring the same idea in several different mediums. My work explores feminism, neuroscience, technology, and nature. I just finished my latest neuroscience film, The Teen Brain, that Goldie Hawn executive-produced with her MindUp organization. It distills the neuroscience of adolescence into a ten-minute film with many animations and interviews with teens. A lot of my work is about distilling complex ideas in new ways. 

JWA: How would you describe your artistic practice? 

TS: I think I would say my artistic practice is really drawn from my Shabbat practice. All my creative ideas come to me on Shabbat, my day without screens, when I am usually in nature or in a reflective state—so not responding, but more thinking about and processing all that is already in my mind, and only responding to the nature around me. Then I bring that to my art studio in Sausalito and implement those ideas, either through words or wood or some visual recombining. 

JWA: I often hear people say, “Oh, I’m just not creative” or something similar. How would you respond?

TS: I wouldn’t believe them. Then I would try to convince them that they are.  Everyone is creative. Everyone has a unique perspective. A unique history and some unique expertise to share. Creativity is putting ideas together in a unique way.