Two months ago, when the current occupant of the Oval Office announced “an aggressive review of Smithsonian museums,” Adrienne and I decided to undertake our “Save the Art Tour 2 — the Northern Route,” to demonstrate our ongoing commitment to the arts. (Read about our infamous “Save the Art Tour 1 — the Southern Route” here.)

So on October 1, we began a 10-day road trip to visit as many New England art museums, state parks and friends as we could. One of our first stops was the Clark Institute of Art in Williamstown, MA. The art holdings at the Clark surpassed our expectations and introduced us to artists we had never heard of. One of them was Laura Ellen Bacon, a British sculptor who uses all natural materials. The Clark commissioned a sculpture by her for a specific outdoor space which she entitled, “Gathering My Thoughts.”

According to the sculpture’s accompanying description, Bacon “weaves her sculptures from slender strands of willow. Gradually, twist by twist, she builds an enormous form with a complex interior structure. The technique is entirely original to her, but has affinities with rural English crafts like fences, baskets, and thatching, as well as the nests and burrow of birds and other animals . . . . She enjoys the fact that the sculpture may become a habitat for insects and other creatures. Because it is made entirely from natural materials, it will be disassembled and allowed to degrade into the forest floor.”

About Bacon’s work, art curator and journalist Catherine Milner has written: “In a world where we have distanced ourselves from the land, her sculptures remind us that we are still, at our core, part of it — a fleeting structure, held tougher for a moment, before nature reclaims everything once more.”