Raised in Boston and having lived in Manhattan, Philippe Simon encountered quite a change of scenery when he moved to Franklin County in the early 2000s.
He remembered roaming Boston’s Emerald Necklace as a young boy — one of his only escapes from the urban sprawl. However, when Simon came to western Massachusetts, he was surprised to find that — despite the woods, hills and mountains — there was still a disconnect between man and nature.
“I noticed there was beautiful woods when I was living in Shelburne Falls, but everyone was sitting up in the cafés,” Simon said. “Somewhere along the line of my life, I realized there was some kind of barrier between nature and humanity — it’s biblical, societal, it’s hunter/gatherer.”
Almost two decades later, Simon is still in the area. He lives in Greenfield, where he works as a production coordinator for Greenfield Community Television and is on the city’s Human Rights Commission.
But Simon has also worked to bridge that gap he sees between man and his natural surroundings.
“It was a childhood fantasy of mine to come across these structures that had just been left. So, I started making them myself,” Simon explained, standing next to a large, tent-like structure he made entirely of branches.
In his spare time, Simon has been hiking into Greenfield’s Temple Woods, erecting these structures. The “quadripods” he makes are in the shape of a teepee.
These structures are Simon’s art, and he builds them after clearing the area and sweeping the ground.
“There’s a visual component, artistic. It has openings on all four sides,” said Simon, adding that, oftentimes, the structure’s openings are positioned so they “point” someone’s eye to a certain piece of nature.
A knot in a tree near the first of Simon’s structures in Temple Woods is an example of this. He describes the knot as “like a painting on the wall,” and it draws the eyes of visitors to his structure.
Simon’s woodland artistry has helped him in many ways. It’s helped him go back to a time when he was a boy, playing in the woods, and has also helped him realize his childhood fantasy of coming across abandoned human structures surrounded by nature.
His experience as a volunteer at the Boston Children’s Museum teaching other children to make things and create play structures as a youth, as well as learning stone wall building and farming skills when he moved to the area in 2001, influenced Simon in his desire to make structures. The most important influence, however, was his personal love of nature.
“No one needs an art degree to make these, and this is something I’ve created for ‘ordinary people’ to enjoy doing,” Simon said.
Simon has built the structures in Shelburne Falls, on the Pocumtuck Range and on Shelburne’s Massaemett Mountain, but the woods of Greenfield are his current canvas.
Hikers who come across the structures, Simon said, are often delighted, and stop to meditate, read or just relax.
“I came out here and I found what I was kind of hoping for, a mother and her son,” Simon said of his Temple Woods structures, explaining that the joy he gets when he comes across the unexpected in the woods is something he wants to share.
“Humanity needs healing and nature,” Simon said.
When he’s come across someone enjoying his art, Simon has often left them alone, allowing them to have a personal experience with something unexpected, something they have no idea how it came to be.
There have been several instances where his art and the idea of “healing” have intersected, Simon said.
First, the structures make Simon feel like his “primitive self,” free of the stresses of the modern world, and doing what his paleolithic forebears did — building their own shelters, tools and art with whatever is naturally around them.
But Simon said his art could be healing for others, too. He recalled a Ugandan human rights commissioner who visited him in Franklin County a few years ago.
The Ugandan woman, who worked frequently with men who had beaten or raped women, as well as the victims themselves, suggested the abusers should try what Simon does.
“People like that should do this,” Simon said. “It’s healing. It’s heavy labor, but also tinkering and thought and artistry.”
In fact, Simon said he’s talked with local law enforcement and jailers about the potential for a nature-based art program for rehabilitation purposes. The structures induce a certain meditation, Simon said, which can also bring a feeling of inner peace.
Through building, Simon said he’s forced to reflect on the particular “ingredients” the woods offer. He appreciates the uniqueness of each woodland clearing where he builds, and said those individual qualities often lend themselves to his art, which uses no outside materials, but only what is available in front of him.
“Nature is really the dictator here for once,” Simon said, taking out a glass jar and pouring a mixture of nuts and seeds on the ground — an “offering” for squirrels. “Every area of the forest offers something unique.”
Simon then gestured toward the second of his structures in Temple Woods, noting how it was made to be more straight and narrow, and thus, “more indicative of the things in this area.”
The first time Simon built a structure in Temple Woods, he came back to find that coyotes had eaten a large bird, leaving bountiful feathers for evidence. The idea of animals doing something natural, like eating, in the midst of his structures comforted him.
“They were clearly not bothered by the structure. They accepted it,” Simon said.
And that’s what the goal of Simon’s art is, not just for animals, but for people. He wants them to stop, notice and love their surroundings, and contemplate their humanity.
“It’s one of my many attempts to blur the lines between animals and man,” he said.
Staff reporter David McLellan started working at the Greenfield Recorder this year. He covers Orange, New Salem and Wendell. He can be reached at: dmclellan@recorder.com or 413-772-0261, ext. 268.
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