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11/16/2016 07:30 AMCan you still recite the opening lines of Joyce Kilmer’s enduring poem, “Trees”? If you are a certain age, you probably memorized the verse in elementary school. So now, one more time for nostalgia: I think that I shall never see, a poem lovely as a tree.
Kilmer, who wrote his verse in 1913, had never even seen Christmas trees decorated by Susan Peterson, who is creating a tree for the Child & Family Agency of Southeastern Connecticut’s upcoming Festival of Trees in Essex. And Susan knows a thing or two about decorating. On two occasions, she has helped decorate the White House for Christmas.
The theme of Susan’s creation for the Festival of Trees is going to be Natural Connecticut, and she is decorating holiday balls with hand-painted Connecticut shorebirds. Recently Susan showed a visitor a box with multi-colored feathers and ribbons that will also be a part of the final tree, along with seedpods and possibly even small bird’s nests. She is thinking of a statue of an eagle for the tree topper.
The upcoming tree festival will feature 25 artificial trees, most around 4 ½ feet tall, some displayed in front of shops along Essex Main Street and other shown in a pop-up Gallery of Trees at a currently unoccupied store at 5 Main Street. The trees along Main Street will go up shortly after Thanksgiving. The Gallery of Trees will open from Monday, Dec. 5 to Saturday, Dec. 10.
The display isn’t just a chance to get decorating ideas—it’s a chance to take your favorite tree home for the holidays. The public will be able to buy books of five chances at participating merchants and at the gallery for $20 each and place a ticket in a box next any tree they hope to win. The drawings for the winners will take place at 4 p.m. on Dec. 10 as a part of the annual Essex Holiday Stroll. Winners do not have to be present.
All proceeds will support the work of the Child & Family agency, which includes counseling centers for families and children, one of which is located in Essex; school physical and mental health programs; and after-school education programs for children in New London, New Haven, and Windham counties.
Susan has long decorated both trees and holiday rooms at the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme. Her inspirations for museum trees have included one with Egyptian-themed décor, and another that took its theme from the novel Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. For one holiday show, she fashioned a tree that paid tribute to another tree: Her Christmas creation was called Mountain Laurel’s Fleeting Beauty. She used pinecones painted pink to reproduce the effect of the mountain laurel’s blossoms, with painted acorns simulating the trees’ buds.
On another occasion, one of her decorations for a museum tree, designed as a tribute to Asia’s Silk Road, produced unexpected consequences. It had real cocoons on it and they did what cocoons inevitably do: They started hatching.
Susan was part of the team that decorated the White House for Christmas in both 2011 and 2012. After she learned about the program, which recruits volunteers from throughout the United States, she submitted a portfolio of her work along with the information for the necessary security clearance. She had to be in Washington on Thanksgiving night and worked with other volunteers for three days in a local warehouse assembling decorations and then worked for three days at the White House making its public rooms and Christmas trees look festive enough for the holiday.
The first year Susan, who worked in the East Room, wove long, thin ropes of evergreen together to make them fuller before hanging the ropes on door and window frames. After her first experience in 2011, Susan was again asked back to be part of the volunteer team in 2012. One of her tasks was to string 1,500 glass balls as part of the decoration scheme in a part of the East Garden Room known as the Bookseller’s area.
Susan says it is quite unusual to be asked back for a second year, particularly since in 2012 the number of volunteer decorators was halved. The first year there were some 136 volunteers, but the second year the number was pared back to only 54. Susan has letters on White House stationery thanking her for her work each year signed by Michele Obama.
Born in Connecticut, Susan lived here until she was in 4th grade and then moved to Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan, but moved back to this state in the middle of her senior year of high school. Even in the Midwest, she never completely left Connecticut because her family had a summerhouse in Clinton. She graduated from Pratt Institute In Brooklyn, known for its programs in art, design and architecture. Subsequently she got a master’s degree in art education from Pratt, where she also met her husband Bruce. The couple now has a grown son, James, also an artist.
After graduation, Susan taught art at collegiate school in Manhattan, and also became an admissions evaluator for the lower school. When Bruce took a job in Chicago, Susan taught high school classes in art and photography in Illinois and when the couple returned to Connecticut, she taught art briefly in the old Lyme school system and later substituted as an art teacher in both Old Saybrook and Regional District 4 schools. She also worked as a special education resource tutor in Westbrook High School. In between teaching, she was a partner for more than a decade in an interior design firm in Glastonbury.
Throughout her professional life, Susan has also been a dedicated volunteer. And there is a persistent theme in much of the work she does: participating in activities that help children. When she lived in Old Lyme, she was head of that area’s Child & Family Auxiliary. The money the Essex auxiliary hopes to raise with the upcoming festival of trees, Susan notes, is very important to the work of the Child & Family Agency. Many of the agency’s grants are targeted for exclusive use in special areas, but the money that comes from the auxiliary fundraisers is unrestricted and can be used with flexibility to fill existing needs.
When she finishes decorating her tree for the Festival of Trees, Susan is nowhere near finished with tree adornment. There are still two more trees at her own home waiting for her to decorate.
Festival of Trees
The Festival of Trees to benefit the Child & Family Auxiliary of Southeastern Connecticut begins on Essex Main Street go up right after Thanksgiving. The Pop-up Gallery of Trees runs Monday, Dec. 5 to Saturday, Dec. 10 at 5 Main Street in Essex. To bid on trees, books of tickets, $20 for five, are available at local merchants. The drawing for tree winners will be held during the Essex Holiday Stroll on Dec. 10 at 4 p.m. Winners do not have to be present. For more information, visit www.childandfamilyagency.org.