The current exhibit at the Essex Art Center's Beland Gallery showcases Joyce Audy Zarins sculptural work of tree footprints and drip lines. One of the trees she documents stands on the South Common. Joyce chose this tree because her grandmother came from Canada in 1912 at the age of 13 to work in the Lawrence textile mills, the year of the great labor strike. She researched the trees on the Common to determine which one was closest to the place where the strikers gathered. Her chosen tree serves today as a “witness” to her grandmother’s presence and the strike of 1912.