If you want to see great art in Muskoka, take a hike

Just beyond the gate of the Tree Museum an outdoor art gallery east of Gravenhurst, Ont. there's a ramp made of industrial steel. It's a 40-foot sculpture that's been bolted into a rock, a glacial erratic of even grander scale. Tree trunks punch through the artwork's metal canopy, stretching high above. And if you walk underneath, you'll see sunlight glimmering through a belt of cut-out stars.

"Sky Shelter is about framing the moss and the rock, focusing our attention, a viewing room for nature," reads a description of the work (which is viewable upon scanning a nearby QR code). But when I encountered the piece this summer, I barely glanced at my phone. Instead, I cautiously questioned the correct course of action. Should I leave the trail? Would it be OK to get closer to the artwork? And maybe climb on top of it?

E.J. Lightman is the founder and co-curator of The Tree Museum, and Sky Shelter (2004) is her creation, just one of the pieces she's installed at the site. A multidisciplinary artist from Toronto, Lightman was at her family cottage across the lake from the museum when I called her after my visit.

"Usually you go into a gallery and believe me, I've been in many over the years," says Lightman with a laugh. "People walk in, they look around for 10 minutes and they're out." But at the Tree Museum, the environment urges you to move, and see, in an entirely different way. "You have to first walk into the space, and that walk starts to integrate you into nature," she says. "It sets up the mind there's an awareness of where you are. And then you start seeing the works of art."

Over the years, Lightman has enjoyed watching visitors react to Sky Shelter. "The kids that come to visit, they enjoy it the most. Oh my god, they climb all around it and inside. They're all over it," she says. "It's wonderful to see."

I'd hardly say I was "all over it" myself. (My jungle gym days are long behind me, and even back then, I was more of an "indoor recess" kid.) But after taking a few curious steps to test the lode-bearing capabilities of the "roof," I think my brain experienced the same reboot that Lightman was talking about.

At the Tree Museum, simply looking isn't good enough. You've got to physically explore the place and be fully aware of your surroundings if not just to locate the art, then to spare yourself a twisted ankle.

Searching for art in the forest

There's no map of the Tree Museum. Instead, there are arrows and QR codes posted throughout. They're easy enough to spot, and they'll show you where to wander. But if you want to get up close to the art or simply see it at all prepare to break from the path. Many things are hiding in plain sight, only visible after you've hopped up on a swath of pre-Cambrian rock, or pushed through overgrown grasses. "This is a hike in the woods," the museum's website states. You can't believe everything you read online, but in this case, the warnings are gospel.

Some of my favourite experiences at the Tree Museum involved works that only reveal themselves with close looking optical illusions, really, that disappear into the landscape. Toronto artist Ed Pien has hung round mirrors in the forest portals that pleasingly bend (or spin?) reality, should a breeze blow through the trees.

Badanna Zack's Mound of Cars puts the Kensington Market Garden Car to shame. Using automotive scrap, she constructed an enormous piece that mimics the curve of a rocky ridge that cuts across the path. First installed in 1998, it's now consumed by moss and trees, resembling its geological muse more convincingly with every passing season.

John Dickson's Inside Out (2007) is one more highlight. Convincingly cloaked by mirrors, the structure is a literal outhouse though not a functional one, please note. I'd seen photos of the piece before arriving at the Tree Museum, but even so, I felt a ping of surprise and delight when my eyes finally detected it on top of a rock.

It's one of Lightman's personal favourites, and like all the best works in the collection sculptures and installations that have been built right into the landscape she says it comments on nature while "taking in the surroundings."

The seed of an idea

Lightman has great affection for the land where the museum is located. "It's a paradise up here," she says, and the lot which was previously owned by Mentor College, a private school in Mississauga now belongs to her family. When she started the project in 1997, the idea of holding an outdoor art show on the property was a promising opportunity. "All the artists I know are always having trouble finding exhibition spaces," says Lightman, and the Tree Museum's first event featured three artists in a rundown garage. "It had been taken over by raccoons and other wildlife," she laughs.

By year two, a house on the property was fixed up, and the Tree Museum launched a residency program on the site, allowing artists to stay there as they developed new work that would be installed on the land. Over the years, more than 80 artists from Canada and abroad came to the Tree Museum to be involved in its regular exhibitions, which ran until 2019.

"It's rare to have a space like this because other parks or outdoor galleries have what I call 'plunk-down art," says Lightman. "The artist creates it somewhere else mostly and then puts it in. But at our place, they are inspired by the surroundings, and many of the artists used stuff from the woods."

These days, things are quieter at the Tree Museum. Lightman and her longtime co-curator, Anne O'Callaghan, are both retired, which is why new exhibitions have ceased. "We're too tired to keep going," Lightman says with a laugh. "I'm 71 years old, and she is older than that." But she intends to keep the museum open indefinitely, and the site is maintained with the help of a friend and neighbour, Chad Greavette.

How to visit

Lightman opens the museum to the public every June through October. It's free to visit, andthe distance from the grassy parking lot (off Doe Lake Road) to the museum is an easy walk of 1 km. The ground was soft and carpeted with rust-coloured pine needles, and as I passed an enviable cottage property or two, I shared the trail with a leaping frog and innumerable insects.

Upon reaching the official entrance of the museum, the self-guided tour continues, taking you another 1.2 kilometres into the woods on a hunt for the tree Museum's collection, works by artists including Jocelyne Belcourt Salem and Noel Harding that are as permanent as the elements will allow.

When I arrived, there was one other vehicle already there, and yet, in my two-and-a-half hours of wandering, I didn't see another (human) soul on the path. It's entirely likely that someone was clambering on a rock to see Tim Whiten's sandblasted rock 'n' roll skeletons (Danse, 1998) while I was decoding the symbols on Deeter Hastenteufel's Olmec head (Tracing a Mystery, 2019).

"I've gone in there a number of times and I think I'm alone and I'm not," says Lightman. "There is someone there every day," she says, which inspires her to keep the museum alive as long as she can. "It's wonderful to look at the parking lot and see it full It kind of feels like it was worth it."

For more information, visit www.thetreemuseum.ca