Opening: Friday, Sept. 27
8:00 PM at Rad Myco
Constantly dissolving and rebuilding the barrier between its inner and outer world, each hyphal tip in a mycelial network receives and transmits messages with all that it encounters. Most of these communications have yet to be deciphered by humans, though we try. The language of fungi is anomalous and seemingly indecipherable – only to be witnessed through forms of silent catalysis. Wood decay exemplifies this notion. As a cold fire, it is a slow disassembly of nature’s most persistent molecules into the return of living radiations.
In/Visible Signals: Cold Fire is an exhibition and silent auction that expresses this notion through its collection of artworks centered on visualizing and deepening relationship with the fungal lexicon. Featuring an expansive array of artists, works in the exhibition explore the complexity of the dynamic fungal world through painting, sculpture, photographs, new media, video, and sound work. These physical manifestations of messages, metaphors, and meanings join together to facilitate care and connections between fungi, humans, and the rest of the living world.
Featuring works from
Julie Beeler
Anthony Bennett
Danielle Caners
Anaís Córdova Páez
April Coulon
Aki Fujiyoshi
Erika Harada
Roger Horn
Miriam Josi, Stella Lee Prowse (Aléa)
Ger Killeen
April Kissinger
Jemila MacEwan
Marzia Matarese
Shannon McAlerney
Peter McCoy
Christina McLachlan
Brad Necyk, Gary James Joynes
Cyprien Nozières
Fabian Oswald
Timothy Owen
Carol Padberg
Long Pan
Kate Patrick
Roger Peet
Joel Penner
Matthew Pfeffer
Maree Povey
Sarah Råholm
Seri Robinson
David Robinson, Bryan Michael Mills
Mariela Schöffmann
Sam Shoemaker
Jerome Tavé, Kyle Lawson (10th Floor)
Roberta Trentin
Joke Van den Heuvel
Janelle VanderKelen
Beth Walker
Camilla Watson
Kristen Wierman
Alicia Wyatt
Anthony Bennett
Danielle Caners
Anaís Córdova Páez
April Coulon
Aki Fujiyoshi
Erika Harada
Roger Horn
Miriam Josi, Stella Lee Prowse (Aléa)
Ger Killeen
April Kissinger
Jemila MacEwan
Marzia Matarese
Shannon McAlerney
Peter McCoy
Christina McLachlan
Brad Necyk, Gary James Joynes
Cyprien Nozières
Fabian Oswald
Timothy Owen
Carol Padberg
Long Pan
Kate Patrick
Roger Peet
Joel Penner
Matthew Pfeffer
Maree Povey
Sarah Råholm
Seri Robinson
David Robinson, Bryan Michael Mills
Mariela Schöffmann
Sam Shoemaker
Jerome Tavé, Kyle Lawson (10th Floor)
Roberta Trentin
Joke Van den Heuvel
Janelle VanderKelen
Beth Walker
Camilla Watson
Kristen Wierman
Alicia Wyatt
Artist Bios
Julie Beeler is an acclaimed designer, artist, and educator with a deep love and curiosity for the natural world. Her work has been featured by The New York Times, Popular Science, The Smithsonian Institution and The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, among others.
She created the Mushroom Color Atlas website to honor and celebrate the universe of resplendent color that exists in the fungi kingdom, making it accessible to people around the world. Her book The Mushroom Color Atlas, recently published by Chronicle Books, is a comprehensive primer on the universe of colors lurking inside fungi. It is equal parts art book, field guide, and dye-making workshop. In every form, her effort is a timeless reference that will be used for years to come.
Julie’s work inspires new ways of thinking about the possibility and power of natural color and supports an important, scalable trend and innovation to the benefit of the greater good: moving people away from synthetic colorants to those readily available in nature. She is equally inspired to experiment, discover, and contribute to our expanding knowledge and appreciation of fungi.
Prior to immersing herself in the wonder of the fungi kingdom, Julie spent a decades-long career at the vanguard of interactive design. As co-founder of Second Story, she worked with many of the world’s greatest museums and cultural institutions crafting immersive environments that blended the digital and physical worlds. For seven years, she was on the faculty of PNCA and OCAC, and now is a teacher at Wildcraft Studio School in Portland. In 2018 she founded Bloom & Dye, a natural dye studio and farm in the Pacific Northwest ideally situated for foraging mushrooms, growing fresh-cut color, and creating fine art.
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I am a multimedia artist and sculptor based in Sheffield, with a focus on addressing the perilous state of our planet and society.
Proud of my working-class roots, I continue to channel my passion and anger through the Anthropocene. Born in the Black Country, a son of a nut and bolt forger, my journey took me through the vibrant cultures of Northern Soul, Punk, and New Wave before I moved to Sheffield in 1980. At art college, I immersed myself in every medium available, from sculpting and painting to video-making and noise creation. Though not a musician, I formed, joined, and performed with local bands such as In the Nursery and The Anti Group. Politically active, I played a significant role in two college occupations and supported working-class struggles, including the miners' strike, using my artwork to advocate and agitate.
After college, while navigating the challenges of signing on, I collaborated with other creatives, forming the intermedia group Fabricata Illuminata and touring music and live art venues. Disillusioned with the art world and facing the need to support my growing family, I became self-employed, initially illustrating posters for bands, then making theatre props, and eventually creating sculptural exhibits for museums. In 1998, I transitioned to making artwork for other artists. Since 2005, I have returned to my own art while balancing paid commissions, often showcasing my work in unconventional, highly public spaces. I collaborate with a diverse range of individuals, from non-artists and street artists to academics and other creatives. More about my work can be found at www.swarfhorse.co.uk and www.gaiamycota.org.
Since 1998, I have been creating artworks for Yinka Shonibare CBE. Notably, Yinka's show at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Belgium in 2004, featuring works I designed and made, was one of the five nominations for the Turner Prize. Most recently, I delivered Yinka's installation 'Monument to the Restitution of Mind and Soul,' currently exhibited at the Nigerian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2024.
In 2011, I co-conceived 'The Festival of the Mind' with Professor Vanessa Toulmin, founder of The National Fairground and Circus Archive at the University of Sheffield, which has continued biennially ever since.
Inspired by my academic collaborator, mycologist and microbiologist Professor Duncan Cameron, I creatively challenge what we call 'emotional conservatism' or 'the bucolic plague’. This enquiry reveals itself through many artworks, exhibited internationally, in exhibitions and publications. My fascination with fungi began at my first meeting with Duncan, and has taken over my life ever since.
Currently, I hold the position of Honorary Research Fellow for Environmental Advocacy at the Interface of Science and Contemporary Art at the Institute for Sustainable Food, University of Sheffield.
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Danielle Caners is the pilot of a magnificent space shuttle bringing you on a journey to the depths of the earth, far into the cosmos and back to the core of your being. Her art is the synthesis of an untameable thirst to learn, create, and grow. Her paintings are tapestries of visual codes that reward viewers with new discoveries every time they are revisited - each one embedded with ancestral wisdom, wonder of nature and practical observations of what it is to live a fulfilled life. Danielle’s global reputation is a testament to the power of what she brings. She stands at the fulcrum of art, education and healing; guiding us to self-actualization.
Specializing in drawing and painting, Caners has grown into an inspirational speaker, giving workshops and producing books, videos and beyond. Danielle’s artistic skills continue to adapt and expand into traditional painting methods, digital art, augmented reality and alternative means of story telling.
The many projects she’s contributed to include Myco Wisdom, an art and education project introducing people into the world of fungi, Prosthetic Reality, the first Augmented Reality art book (featured in VICE news and CNET), mural commissions and curating The Antipodes Project with over thirty international contributors (featured in Juxtapoz and White Hot magazines). Her art has shown in four continents and sells around the world.
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Anaís is dedicated to reflecting on how politics, ecology, gender and moving images dialogue in the age of Internet. Her work puts care at the center as a way to challenge the processes of creativity in film production and exhibition. She has collaborated with artists and collectives from the global south. She is director of the short film Lubricas (2016) and the series Amazonia+Covid (2020). She holds a master's degree on film curating studies from Elias Querejeta Zine Eskola- San Sebastian/Donostia and was fellow from Flaherty seminar 2022. She is programmer of Equis Festival de Cine Feminista- Ecuador and has programmed in the Balkans, Spain, and Colombia. Anaís believes on science like an experiment and fungus like the future.
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I love to capture the essence of fungi through clay and other sculpture mediums. I started working significantly with clay in 2015 where i “recreated” creatures from all over the universe in an attempt to make scientific concepts more accessible. This venture was called Miscreation Nation, and i let it lapse. But when i fell in love with fungi last year, i decided to use all of my talents to figure out where i fit into the fungi-verse, and so came about these life-like recreations of these beautiful beings.
I take time to try and understand the fungi, their environments and mycelium when creating my pieces, even though i am unable to recreate their environments entirely in their actuality, e.g. at this point i am only able to use cork bark when creating tree structures even though i would love to use the barks of trees these beings work alongside. I also love to integrate kodama into my works as these spirits are known in Japanese folklore to watch over a forest and signify that it is healthy.
In these three pieces i am showcasing on the genus Anthracobia, i used charcoal from my firepit and dirt mixed with acrylic paint to bring life to their environments. I integrated kodama within some of the pieces to show that the resurgence of the forest was well underway and could be seen with the grass, other sprouts and emergence of these vivacious orange cups. I also recreated Anthracobia’s mycelial mats and my own idea of mycelial caves to show Anthrcobia’s soil prowess and significant strength for resurging these delicate ecosystems after such tremendous loss.
What powerful beings Anthracobia are. I find it fascinating that within the desolate-seeming landscape of a burned forest, the floor is actually teeming with life. These vibrant fungi, along with a whole host of other beings are living their lives and reenergizing these forests to bring about life anew.
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I was inspired by this year’s featured fungi to submit a piece which is an homage to the artist Yayoi Kusama. The resilience and striking appearance of the Anthracobia recalled Kusama’s brightly colored work and installations of repetitive patterns, particularly polka dots. But it is also her personal history, determination and professional revival that made me want to present this piece.
I am a Bremerton, WA based textile artist working primarily with katazome. I came across the katazome method of dyeing a few years back, while researching and experimenting with indigo dye methods.
It’s a traditional resist dye process utilizing the cutting of stencils from persimmon juice-reinforced paper and squeegeeing on rice paste. Nowadays it’s an uncommon artform due to it requiring quite a bit more time and effort than other, more modern methods — but I fell in love with how the dyes express themselves on fabric with this method. The imperfect lines and slightly faded colors that result, and the limitations when it comes to the amount of detail that can be used in the stencils was at first a challenge for me, as a detail oriented perfectionist, but it eventually led me to let go and focus more on composition and start to actually have fun in my creative process.
Being Japanese-American and born in Japan, I have felt a lot of connection to this artform -- my mother is a sewist, as was my grandma, and her mother was a weaver working with kasuri. Textile work runs in my blood and family history, and while I was never so adept at sewing, I've always been an illustrator and designer, and translating those works to fabric has been a great joy. Though my family has seen its share of generational trauma, I want to forge a bond through time through my practice.
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As a filmmaker, anthropologist, and professor, my passion lies in crafting compelling narratives that delve into the intricacies of human experience. With a diverse portfolio spanning documentaries, unconventional ethnographic films, fictions, and experimental works, my artistic journey is a testament to the transformative power of storytelling.
Rooted in my upbringing in the southeastern United States, my work is deeply influenced by the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement. It reflects a commitment to amplifying the voices of marginalized communities, engaging in social discourse, and fostering introspection. My creative work and research is devoted to exploring themes of migration, identity, culture, and the human condition.
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Aléa's ongoing research project ‘Back to Dirt’ explores a unique bio-inclusive myco-fabrication process that utilizes mycelium, the root system of fungi, and local waste substrates to grow objects in soil, exploring the potential of mycelia’s regenerative capacities.
Aléa’s mission is to establish a deeper relationship between the natural and built environment by designing autonomous place-based systems for a post-fossil fuel future. Their aim is to take a critical approach to biodesign to avoid a trajectory of exploitation and control of nature and to instead imagine new ways of making that interact and share control and benefits with the other-than-human.
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Ger Killeen is a former professor of English and New Media at Marylhurst University. He is the author of several books of poetry including 'Lia A Léimfidh Thar Tonnta: A Stone That Will Leap Over The Waves' (Trask House, 1999), 'A Wren' (Bluestem Press, winner of the Bluestem Award for Poetry), 'Signs Following' (Parlor Press, 2005), 'Blood Orbits' (Parlor Press 2009), ‘JuárOz’ (Headlandia Press, 2015) and 'Ghost Topologies: AR Poems' (Headlandia Press, 2021). His work also appears in several anthologies including 'From Here We Speak' (Oregon State University Press), 'American Poetry: The Next Generation' (Carnegie-Mellon University Press), and 'The Gertrude Stein Awards' (Green Integer). He recently edited ‘More Truly, More Strange: An Anthology of Poetry In Augmented Reality’ (www.arspoetica.io)
He works as an independent AR developer for the arts, literature, and digital humanities, as well as a filmmaker and digital artist. His work has been exhibited at digital art exhibitions all over the world including London, Paris, New York City, Barcelona, and Hong Kong.
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Jemila MacEwan is an environmental artist known for their earthworks, installations, performances and expanded cinema projects. Their work takes an expansive view of time and geography, often created through slow acts of physical endurance. MacEwan invites audiences to take an interspecies perspective for working through the overwhelming emotional toll of reckoning with anthropogenic climate change and mass extinction.
MacEwan was awarded the NYSCA/NYFA Fellowship in Architecture/Environmental Structures/Design, The Philip Hunter Environmental Art Fellowship, The BigCi Environmental Award and is a TEDxBoston Planetary Fellow. MacEwan has presented work internationally including at; ARoS Museum (Denmark), The Australian Consulate-General (NYC), Pioneer Works (NYC), Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts (NYC), and Skaftfell Center (Iceland). Notable residencies include; Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Art OMI, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, BANFF Center for Arts and Creativity, and Ox-Bow School of Painting. Their work has been published in Art in America, Boston Globe, Hyperallergic, and SFMoMA. MacEwan has been generously supported by The Foundation for Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, New York State Council for the Arts, Creative Australia, The Ian Potter Cultural Council and The Marten Bequest Traveling Scholarship.
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Marzia Matarese (Naples, 1989) articulates her practice between mycology and visual arts, participating in various individual and collective research and creation processes, often involving fungi. Her works are nourished by disordered methodologies and speculative fiction, materializing in different media: video, photography, installation, AV performance, and cultivation media.
Her work explores the intricate relationships between organic, inorganic, and artificial realms, aiming to create a speculative cosmo-technic that can emancipate us from human exceptionalism, giving space to post-natural (and post-human) queer ecologies. In this process, she appeals to the construction of an expanded kinship that includes biological beings as well as abiotic and geological entities. She is interested in exploring the transformative capacity of languages as tools for world-making, weaving bonds, and undoing power structures.
Through her works, she seeks to materialize embodied strategies to inhabit the limits of these languages, their cracks, inconsistencies, failures, and frictions. Her research engages with the concepts of transformation and inter-species relationships, inviting us to reconsider our relationship with the ecosystems we inhabit. She examines the interactions between organisms and environments, to create narratives that challenge the normative structures that determine our ecological and existential realities.
She is part of Arquea Colectivo, a duo that works at the intersections of sound creation, visual art, and biology, delving into formats typical of audiovisual performance and expanded cinema. Between 2019 and 2021, she participated in punto7, a series of meetings held in the Tabernas desert (Almería) aimed at generating experimental actions linked to space and sound performance. She is an artist-in-residence at Salamina, a shared space for artists in L'Hospitalet del Llobregat. She is also part of eemeemee, a network that shares processes and knowledge generated around do-it-with-others mycology.
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I studied photography at Humboldt State University and have worked with film photography and digital photography over the years. Three years ago I began working at Bullseye every year Glass factory in Portland Oregon and fell in love with kiln formed glass. I started out making simple pieces like coasters, plates and bowls. Bullseye hosts an employee art show which pushed me to explore other ways to work with glass. Last autumn I began experimenting with fusing mushroom spore prints to see if I could fix the image of the spore print in glass. I've been fascinated by mushrooms for years and love to find, identify, photograph, and collect mushroom spore prints. If it's edible that is a bonus but it's never been my prime objective. I just love the world of fungi. Bringing together two of my passions has been a fantastic journey that I've only just begun. The experiments continue and I'm looking forward to this Fall when I can find the amanitas that started it all.
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Christina McLachlan is a painter based in Bellingham, Washington. She was born in Finland in 1989 when her mother was serving in Soviet-era Moscow for the US Foreign Service. McLachlan continued to live overseas for most of her childhood, all while moving back and forth to Virginia with her family between each work assignment. In each new place nature was a constant and source of comfort and curiosity.
McLachlan received her BFA in Painting & Printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2012. Her early years as an artist were spent in Richmond, Virginia where she spent her free time visiting the James River and immersing herself in the local art and music scenes. She has since continued her art practice in her home-studio while working as a custom picture framer. McLachlan loves animals and has been happily painting pet portraits since 2019. Her personal work is a mix of abstract and figurative; often depicting figures transfixed by nature.
Her work has been exhibited at multiple venues, including Gallery 5, the Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens, Studio Two Three, and various group shows hosted by the Sierra Club, all in Richmond, VA; the Mush Love exhibit at the 2018 Radical Mycology Convergence in Mulino, OR, and Dakota Gallery and Makeshift Artspace in Bellingham, WA.
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Brad Necyk (PhD, MFA) is a visual artist, filmmaker, writer, and postdoctoral fellow in York University's Cinema and Media Arts department. His art, films, and writing deal with mental health advocacy. He is the co-founder and creative lead of the Psychedelic Puppet Show Non-Profit.
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After studying Fine Arts in Marseille and Poitiers, Cyprien moved to Paris. He works as director of music videos, animator / operator compositing for feathure-lenght and regularly collaborates with contemporary artists Winshluss and Alain Bublex. Good night little tomato is his first film.
I have been fortunate enough to see forests, mountains, rivers and the ocean. Of all the places I have known so far, it’s the Amazon jungle, with its people, flora, fauna and of course funga, that has a special place in my heart.
I have also been unfortunate enough to witness how these places are being dug up, burned down or covered in concrete, their people, flora, fauna and funga displaced, killed, forgotten. Much of my life, I have been torn between what I used to think of as two sides: The creative side, that just wants to write stories and make pictures, which is what I naturally do and have always done, and my scientific and conservationist side, that wants to invest its time in energy in the protection of the environment, which is what I feel is the right thing to do. It has taken a lot of time and effort to understand that these two sides do not exclude each other.
This is what I am at the moment: a visual artist, writer, science communicator and conservationist deeply fascinated by the living world. If my mission can be summarized in one sentence, it might be this: I want to use my writing and my art to remind us that we live in a mutual relationship with nature and that this relationship has to be mended. Urgently.
Caring for nature is not an act that should solely be motivated by the fact that we depend on it to survive- although this of course is the most compelling argument. We are not whole without nature. This is where the relationship is most seriously damaged- that many of us believe that we can live fulfilled lives while denying our place among non-human life.
Witnessing nature is a religious act to me, an experience I try to convey through the pictures I make: the mystic, mysterious entities that are very much real and can be felt with all senses. The spiritual power that lives in nature does not exclude scientific rationality. One can understand the physics, geology or biology behind a bolt of lightning, a mountain at sunrise or the sprouting of a mushroom. They are still overwhelming, transcendent things experience.
Reading all this, you might have already concluded why fungi are frequent protagonists in my illustrations, next to other weird creatures in their natural habitat. A life form that can be experienced scientifically and spiritually, that nourishes and heals us the same way it nourishes and heals a forest or a poisoned landscape and might just remind us that we are part of an intricate, mysterious and beautiful network- being drawn to them was pretty much inevitable.
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TO is currently tucked away in a naturally build Timber framed cottage in the woods of Maine. Growing mushrooms, doing carpentry, and working in collaboration with nature to create art that inspires others to reconnect our relationship with Nature.
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Carol Padberg is an artist, writer and the founding co-director of the international Confluence MFA at the University of New Mexico. Padberg weaves with Oyster mushrooms, using yarn from her sheep that is colored by plants from her dye fields. As an herbalist she crafts remedies from cultivated and foraged herbs. Her art practice includes making regenerative textiles using ancestral spinning and weaving technologies, and walking the Questa Mine Superfund Site area where she weaves her letters to that mountain with drone imagery of remediation work. She is currently developing the Mess Kit for Settlers, an artwork that straddles poetic and practical interventions for descendants of settlers. Her art has been the subject of exhibitions at the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts, and the New Britain Museum of American Art. Her initiatives have been featured at the Walker Art Center, MoMA, and the Creative Time Summit at the Venice Biennale. Her recent writings can be found in the Multispecies Storytelling in Intermedial Practices (Punctum Press, 2022), EcoArt in Action: Activities, Case Studies and Provocations for Classrooms and Communities (NYU Press, 2022) and The New Farmer’s Almanac (Greenhorns Press, 2023). A mother of three adult children, she lives and shepherds on unceded Tewa land in Alcalde, New Mexico.
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I am an artist concerned with biological materials and ecological issues, and I have been focusing on fungi and plants for the past 6 years. I try to connect with the ecological issues in society through the special way that living things respond to the environment, and try to open up a reflection on the survival and future of human beings in the age of technology through the perspective of non-human beings. I am concerned with the human condition, especially the fate of human beings under the rule of technology. Non-human beings are my mentors, which help me break the parochialism and become my window to explore the world. My creations are based on in-depth research, whether it is social research or technological study, and these undertones of truthfulness and brutal realism are the source of the power of my works, as well as a microcosm of the technological era.
Since 2017 I have been learning to work with mushrooms by cultivating artificial mushrooms, making bio-sculptures using oyster mushrooms and reishi mushrooms, as well as experimenting with making eco-friendly material designs. In contrast to the more popular use of mushroom material as a substitute for foam to make packaging materials, I prefer to amplify the uniqueness of mushrooms and allow them to continue to grow into more random shapes to emphasize their subjectivity of life, and my experimental works are included in jev's Future Material Bank in the Netherlands.
Cultivating mushrooms has given rise to my different series of works.
In the work ""Silk"", based on the characteristic of aerial mycelium growing into the air, I let the mycelium pass through the hole of a needle, which makes a sense of cooperation between non-human and human , and magnifies the subjectivity of the mushroom as a living being, we can feel the powerful initiative of the mushroom as a planetary citizen.
The 2019 work "Wonderland Intersection" is based on the combination of the biotechnology of fungal degradation and the incident of oil spill at sea. I made a purification boat with oyster mushrooms, and let the local fishermen and victims row the boat across the oil spill. The contrast between the size of the sea, the huge industrial machinery and the tiny mushroom boat is so strong that it seems to be swallowed up by these behemoths. It also shows how the big machine, which is out of human control, sweeps away specific individuals, and the spirit of futility but still resistance.
In the last 2 years my work has started to focus on wild mushrooms, and in the process of tracing the trade routes of matsutake mushrooms I will discover the effects of climate warming related to matsutake mushrooms, the infringement of ore extraction in forest reserves, and the changing relationship between human and non-human species in the age of technology. Therefore, work "Matsutake Rain” examines the ecological and trade networks built on the matsutake mushroom from the perspective of a spore. The spore's message of warning is also raised against the backdrop of the climate crisis.
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Combining vibrant visuals with positive affirmations, I create nature inspired watercolors surrounded by the forests of Mt Hood, Oregon. Amongst the forest floor we can learn how flora, fauna + fungi work together to reshape our world, nurture our future, and heal our minds. While hiking with a sketchbook, my illustrations begin as a pencil sketch, later outlined with pen and ink, then awakened with several washed of watercolor. Many of my pigments are collected from local clay soils and wild mushrooms, such as the inky cap and dyers polypore, to infuse a sense of connection with the land. I then turn my illustrations into vinyl sticker art, canvas wall scrolls and thoughtful stationary as a colorful reminder to take care of ourselves + each other through the mycelial network of community healing.
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Roger Peet is an artist, printmaker, muralist and writer living in Portland, Oregon. His visual work tends to focus on civilized bad ideas, predator-prey relationships, and the contemporary crises of biodiversity and Capitalism and what can and can't be done about them. His writing addresses the politics and history of social relationships with the natural world. He is a founding member of the Justseeds Artists' Cooperative, coordinates the national Endangered Species Mural Project for the Center for Biological Diversity, and helps to run the cooperative Flight 64 print studio in Portland. He collaborates with artists, activists and scientists globally and locally in the service of a more generous and a wilder world.
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Joel Penner is a filmmaker who uses scanners, microscopes and cameras to create time lapses of plants and fungi growing and decaying, with the goal of inspiring people to see the beauty of everyday existence.
Anna Sigrithur is a writer and artist whose work explores language, sensory perception and human/non-human relationships.
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Matthew Pfeffer is an experimental artist and filmmaker based in Detroit, Michigan. He grew up in the suburbs of Detroit before moving to the city proper to attend College for Creative Studies, where he graduated in the winter of 2018. His films have been screened in local and international festivals as well as being displayed in galleries.
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I am deeply inspired by the natural world; my creative journey is a reflection of my connection to the earth and the natural environment. As an avid gardener, natural beekeeper, animal lover, and mushroom cultivator, my daily life is intertwined with nature. I strive to live as sustainably and compassionately as possible, guided by a deep respect for all living things and the ecosystems they inhabit.
Printmaking, particularly lino printing, is my preferred medium due to its tactile qualities and the slow, meditative process of carving. The physicality of carving into linoleum is both grounding and liberating, allowing me to lose myself in the rhythm of creating. Each cut, each mark, becomes a meditative act, a dialogue between myself and the material. There is a profound joy in the process of making, an intimate connection with the work.
One of the most captivating aspects of printmaking is the inherent unpredictability of the process. Each print carries an element of surprise, which can be either delightful or disastrous. This uncertainty mirrors life's unpredictability and serves as a powerful reminder to embrace the present moment fully. It anchors me in the here and now, encouraging mindfulness and acceptance of whatever the outcome may be.
My recent body of work celebrates the beauty and diversity of fungi, often overlooked yet essential connectors within ecosystems. Fungi serve as bridges between diverse elements of the environment, facilitating the exchange of nutrients and information. They are the unsung heroes of the natural world, playing a critical role in decomposition and nutrient cycling, which are vital for the health of ecosystems. Fungi embody the interconnectedness of all living beings, reminding us of the symbiotic relationships that sustain life.
I invite viewers to contemplate the kinship between humans and the natural world and to recognize the vital role fungi play in preserving the health and balance of our planet. In doing so, I hope to inspire a deeper appreciation for the intricate web of life that surrounds us and to encourage greater stewardship of our shared environment.
Ultimately, my work is a celebration of life in all its forms, a tribute to the resilience and interconnectedness of nature. It is an invitation to pause, reflect, and embrace the beauty and wonder that surrounds us every day.
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Sarah Råholm (1988) is a Textile Artist and Painter based in Fiskars, Finland.
She is strongly inspired by nature and mythology.
In her works she uses natural dyes from plants and mushrooms – a combination of a holistic nature experience with crafting if one will. It’s for Råholm a way to contribute to the discussion on responsible production and environmental impact of textiles and materials.
Natural dyes are non-toxic dyes derived from e.g., plants and more environmentally friendly. Natural dyes are also more than just handicraft, it’s a beautiful way to get to know plants and mushrooms. It’s a way to learn their properties, where they grow and their ecology.
A more self-sufficient and ecological economy builds upon an understanding of nature’s biodiversity, but also on different alternative techniques to harvest resources without disturbing delicate ecosystems.
Since 2020 Råholm have participated in various Group and Solo Exhibitions in Finland. This fall she will put on a Solo Exhibition in Helsinki, showcasing a whole series textile works made with only mushroom dyed yarn and wool.
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I’m an associate professor of wood anatomy at Oregon State University and work within the field of art science as a bio artist. I’m invested in maintaining a balance in my work, striving to not be ‘just’ an artist or ‘just’ a scientist, but to blur the line between the two disciplines. Neither science nor art can exist without the other, and the intersection of the two disciplines–the substantial Venn diagram overlap, is critical for excellence in either field.
Intersections, in particular, fascinate me, and spalted woodturning is the perfect medium to explore both internal and external intersections. The intersection of science and art. The intersection of old and new methodology–from historic spalted intarsia and marquetry work in the 1400s in Europe to modern spalting methods today that use extraction methods and pipettes. The intersections of form and self–the duality of being an intersex person–the understanding of biological sex in its most primitive form and the communication of those concepts in turned and reversed curves. And underlying it all, the intersection of how humans perceive fungi–both reviled/feared and celebrated as a food source. Spalted wood offers endless opportunities to explore and expose intersections both historic, modern, personal, and external.
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David Robinson is an Irish artist based in London. For the past 10 years his artwork has combined his passion for photography and food, producing magnificent and highly original Fungi Luminograms in his east-end darkroom .His most recent book (and second for children) titled, 'Penny Bun Helps Save the World' was published in September 2018 by GOST. Bryan Mills is former guitarist of The Divine Comedy. His film score credits include Slow West (2015), Pitch black Heist (2012)and The Ice Skater (2020).
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Mariela Schöffmann, born in 1983 in St. Veit an der Glan, is an Austrian artist who lives and works in Vienna. Having a broad range of technical skills, she dedicates herself to creating poetic works.
Her educational path led her to study contextual painting with Ashley Hans Scheirl, printmaking techniques with Gunter Damisch, and artistic animation film with Thomas Renoldner at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.
Whether it is painting or hybrid animation film, Schöffmann's art is typically a fusion of nightmare and reality. She always aims to reflect on the fragility of life and the philosophical questions associated with it.
How can the merging of nightmare and reality in art help to challenge and expand our own perception of reality?
The artist often explores nature in her works, creating fauna and flora inspired pieces. In doing so, she considers humans as beings capable of recognizing how far they have strayed from their original nature.
Viewers are taken on a fantastic journey, experiencing various states of excitement and wonder.
As an animator, she paints 24 frames per second by hand on a glass light table under a reflex camera, controlled by Dragonframe software. Frame by frame, her expressionistic-surreal animation films are created, earning her international recognition multiple times.
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Fungi are my primary collaborators in an interdisciplinary balancing act of art, pedagogy, and science. My recent sculptural work involves the cultivation of dense polypore mushrooms inside hand-built ceramic and hand-blown glass vessels. These hollow vessels provide the ideal conditions for mushrooms to emerge from the orifices of my sculptures. The fungi growing within them behave like a camera obscura that maps time and space– responding to subtle changes in light, humidity, temperature, CO2 levels, and the presence of other mushrooms as they grow. There are no predetermined compositions or outcomes; the ceramic and glass enclosures function as scores or playgrounds for the mushrooms to explore. After the slow gestation process is complete, which can last up to 12 months, the dense wood-like mushroom specimens are dried and preserved.
The laboratory in the basement below my art studio facilitates a dynamic relationship between my art and the dozens of living cultures in my library of rare, poisonous, novel, gourmet, parasitic, medicinal, bioluminescent, and native mushrooms. Some mushrooms are highly resilient, adapting to sculptural and scientific applications with ease. Other species are highly sensitive and require years of scientific research before a meaningful working relationship is revealed.
I believe that artists provide meaningful contributions to scientific and ecological knowledge. Through my art, I've develop new mycomaterial (mycelium based material) methodologies, including "aquafung" composites used for boat building and surf boards. In 2024 I created the world’s largest boat made entirely out of mycomaterials, grown inside a two part mold from a single polypore mushroom growing near my studio in Los Angeles. In my lab, I’ve also successfully cultivated many species for the first time in recorded history, including Gymnopilus ventricosus, Daedaleopsis confragosa, and Trametes betulina. In addition to my sculptural work, I’ve taught mycomaterial fabrication and mushroom cultivation workshops at universities across Southern California, which I see as an extension of my studio work.
My work is driven by a fascination with temporal structures and evolving forms. My studio is not a collection of discrete objects but an ecosystem of relational beings, embodying the rhythm and dynamism of life itself.
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10th Floor Studio is the collective works of Jerome Tavé and Kyle Lawson. The two met in 2008 while studying at Savannah College of Art & Design. They combined their personal studio practices in early 2018, collaboration being an integral part of their work. Long stints of material experimentations, and cross-species explorations have brought fungi to the center of their work. In a time where climate action cannot be ignored, they hope to use their studio practice to contribute to the shift away from anthropocentric narratives.
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Roberta Trentin is a multidisciplinary artist who works in collaboration with the materials and the unknown outcomes. Her work explores overlooked stories of fungi, microorganisms, and plants in the more-than-human world. A background in science and a love of the earth result in an interweaving of macro/micro observations and deeply personal stories in her work. Originally from Italy, Roberta splits her time between the forests of the Hudson Valley and Brooklyn.
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Joke Van den Heuvel, a visual artist living and working between Belgium and Portugal, engages in nonlinear storytelling through a practice of collecting and registering with a need to ask what else is going on – everywhere, inside and outside in contrast to a progress thinking society through the means of a multitude of objects, daily registration and thoughts: the overlooked details … or a world of plants and fungi.
Janelle VanderKelen is an artist, curator, and educator currently based in Knoxville, TN. Her films and intermedia installations imagine alternative acts of relation between imperfect bodies (human, vegetal, geological, or otherwise) and make visible the agency of plants through experimental time-based media processes.
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Beth is a filmmaker and visual artist based in London whose work spans short films, music videos, installations and live visuals. Her recent practice has centered around questions of reconnection; with community, the inner self and the natural world.
Beth’s approach is process led; often working with organic or reactive materials and allowing the work to be be guided by their unique qualities and behaviors. Beth is drawn to subject matters which are intangible and evading, but enjoys revealing these themes through bold imagery and rich colorscapes.
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Camilla Watson is an artist and illustrator. She graduated from Brown University with a degree in Visual Art and English and took classes in the illustration department at the Rhode Island School of Design. In her art Camilla focuses on the power of storytelling and the intersection of books and art. In her degree and after she places a special emphasis on the Book as a physical art form, taking various classes in Books Arts and pursuing individual studies in the field.
One of her main focuses is evoking a vivid atmosphere, creating a whimsical world full of stories and magic. In her illustrations she draws inspiration from nature, children’s books, myths and folklore, as well as old patterns and wallpaper designs. Her art bridges the fantastical and the mundane, revealing the magic in everyday moments and the extraordinary in the ordinary.
Camilla works in a variety of media, from traditional to digital, and is constantly exploring new ways to create beautiful and immersive art. She especially loves working in acrylic gouache with the added texture of colored pencil, blending traditional painterly techniques with an illustrative sensibility.
Camilla has participated in a number of juried group exhibitions, as well as had two solo shows – one as the conclusion of her art degree at Brown University and one in the Georgetown Public Library in Texas. When she is not working on personal work, Camilla creates illustrations for commission or sells her illustrated prints and stickers at art fairs and conventions.
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Kristen Wierman is a mixed media artist based near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Fusing ink, paint, and papercut layering via scanography, Kristen explores the ways that our external environments mirror both our inner light and shadow. Through her art, Kristen aims to visualize new ways to adapt, grow, and grapple with our place in the ever-changing flow of our surroundings. Kristen primarily draws inspiration from time spent throughout the Susquehanna River Valley and Appalachian Mountain Range.
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Inspiration surrounds us. It’s in the everyday mushroom growing in your yard as well as the craggy rocks that make up Mount Everest. Anyone has the ability to notice and appreciate nature, it doesn’t have to be some grand, multi-day hike (though that’s fine too), because nature is everywhere. Often it’s considered to be something that exists far away from cities, but in reality, the line between nature and the city is blurry. It just takes some quiet observation to begin to notice and appreciate it.
This type of inspiration is what I choose to depict, the more obvious and not-so-obvious. I view the subject matter I find through a naturalist lens, noting observations as I work to understand what I see. The records of my discoveries become an illustrated memory. Through my work, I want viewers to be reminded of the amazing intricacy of our planet and hopefully become fascinated with nature as well.
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