MOHAWK REPAIR INSTITUTE
SHELBURNE FALLS, MASSACHUSETTS · FOUNDED 2026
INTRODUCING SEVEN TIRE NATIVES
THE biological foundation of the Mohawk Repair Institute, and why it started with seven tires.
When I took over this building, there were seven automotive tires sitting on the property, left behind by the previous occupant, headed nowhere in particular. I repurposed them as planters. It seemed right: take what was left, put it to use, grow something that belongs here.
That is, in miniature, what the Mohawk Repair Institute does.
Most people who find MRI find it through the archive concept, or the sculptural work, or the name itself, which was already on the building when I arrived, and which I am keeping deliberately, as a teaching instrument rather than an erasure. But the nursery is the part you can hold in your hands. Seven Tire Natives is where the ecological argument becomes physical.
"The name was already on the building. We took it seriously."
WHAT IT IS
Seven Tire Natives is the propagation nursery of the Mohawk Repair Institute. It grows the native plant species of the upper Deerfield River watershed, the plants that ecologically belong to this territory, before two centuries of land clearance and invasive introduction changed what the landscape looks like.
The goal is simple: make the right plants available to the people who want to use them. If you are replacing Japanese knotweed in your yard, pulling bittersweet from a hedgerow, or restoring a disturbed slope to something that can hold itself, these are your plants. They are adapted to this soil, this climate, this watershed. They belong here in a way that the invasives do not.
The nursery is not a retail operation. It is a propagation and distribution point. Plants are grown on site and made available to anyone who wants to do the work of replacement.
THE INSTITUTE
Seven Tire Natives is one of three operational pillars of the Mohawk Repair Institute.
I The Archive
A physical repository of maps, artifacts, and historical documentation of the upper Deerfield watershed and Western Massachusetts, housed in the upper-level facility at Mohawk Repair. The archive holds what official collections overlook.
II The QR Network
A geo-located network of evidence-based historical markers placed across the region, connecting physical sites to documented records in the archive. The real history, located where it happened.
III Seven Tire Natives
The Institute's native plant nursery. Propagating the species of the upper Deerfield watershed and making them available for ecological restoration, starting with seven tires, expanding from there.
The studio produces sculptural work that runs through all three, objects rooted in the material culture and industrial history of this region, sited to make the ecological and cultural argument in physical form.
The nursery is operational now. The archive is being built. The QR network is in development. All of it proceeds from the same premise: the tools of restoration belong to anyone willing to use them.
FOUNDING ADVISORY BOARD
The Mohawk Repair Institute is currently establishing its Founding Advisory Board, a group of individuals who lend their names and standing to this work. There are no meetings, no operational obligations. What is asked is an endorsement of the mission: accurate regional history, ecological restoration, serious archival practice.
If you are the kind of person who thinks this valley deserves a permanent, evidence-based record, and an institution committed to maintaining it, this is where that begins.
INQUIRE ABOUT ADVISORY BOARD MEMBERSHIP
John F. Sendelbach Mohawk Repair Institute Shelburne Falls, MA 2026
