WIP for the first meeting, Friday 21 October 2022. Important that I distil my work and give an overview of its key aspects. The intent is that we understand each other’s areas of focus. In my writing below, I focussed on making, but I should focus on the context of the work for this discussion. I will write it out below and ensure it is not longer than 5 minutes. Three current works were shared with tutor Lydia Halcrow who will facilitate the meeting. The intention is to introduce our work to each other in the group. We will each have 5 minutes and then have a 20min conversation about common themes.
1 Growing mycelium into a face form – a 3d object made of mycelium from oyster mushrooms which I grow
2 Making spore prints – on paper support, foraged mushrooms
3 Creating a vertical installation work – envisioned to make after Cy Twombly’s Treatise on the Veils and should be vertical hanging panels
My current making is concerned with researching the idea of what it means to be making art with living material. I look at artists who work with living materials as well as use research opportunities around their process as well as inform my ideas by reading Tim Ingold, Maria Puig de La Bellacasa, the New Materialist theories of Jane Bennet, and Natasha Myers. I read Merlin Shelldrakes’ Entangled Life earlier, giving me a background to the fungal and mycelium networks. I would describe my artistic practices as having a direct interest in organic matter as such—in my case, it starts with fungal material. I would describe my encounter with materials and subjects, primarily fungi and lichen, through walking and physically connections by growing them myself. My practice is experimental and considers mark-making as traces left behind, repetition and collaboration. Materiality is part of my work as I employ the mushroom as my material; I use mushroom ink, as well as pigment from lichen to paint/draw with. I look at care, maintenance, intention, interconnectivity and adaptation. I would like to see myself working within a community project in my local village where poverty, drug and alcohol abuse, and low education thrive.
Writing about my work for this session as preparation for the discussion
Faces with mycelium: I started this process weeks ago with two faces. One had a great mushroom flush within two weeks, but the body/construct was crumbling, so I discarded it for recycling (composting another work outside the garden). It seems the growing medium should have much more paper and wood bark to act as food (cellulose for the oyster mushrooms which was inoculated into the medium. I also think this would then become a denser object which could keep its form. I am considering exposing it to heat and seeing if it would help with hardening this, but that would kill the growth of mycelium. My question is if I could innoculate it again. Would the medium be sufficient for the mycelium to feed on it? I am talking to mushroom growers to assist with my use of the medium and the process of making mycelium. I envision making moulds into which mycelium can grow to become 3d forms/sculptures, which I can then take out, expose to heat and then be able to show as a complete sculpture made from mushrooms.
Making spore prints/considering cyanotypes prints: It took me to think about a recent article I read in Materiality: Documents on Contemporary Arts. Here Tim Ingold writes an essay: Making Culture and Weaving the World (2000). He discusses how we look at making as objects of human culture, but what about nests, hives and dams? He looks at weaving and how birds create.I am thinking about imprints (mark-making) we leave as a theme of ongoing reflection and research. As artists, we use tools, like our brush strokes and compare or work with how the (non-human) also leaves an imprint. I am using mushrooms to contribute to a work I started to do in an OCA tutor lead session earlier this year but never resolved the work. It was done with charcoal and an eraser about the ideas of drawing through repetition and iteration. I found a few mushrooms scattered in the garden. They are called Agaricus californicus, a saprobic mushroom and also mildly toxic, according to my app. I placed them onto the drawing and hoped for their dark spore.
Series of vertical hanging panels
I made a collage with separate works of mushroom spore as well as a gestural brush mark painting I made earlier in Studio Practice course. The size of this collage is 68 x 43cm.
Using prints/marks/traces (left behind on a surface) in a collage and thinking of making a series of works where I combine paintings with mark-making. (I Hope this will slot in with the above idea of research) I consider working like Cy Twombly – combine them with masking tape and place them on a bigger sheet of paper, and present them as vertical hanging panels. The intent would be to build up a body of work that would make the panels much bigger. I am thinking of panels being 120 x 70 cm. I will work along ideas of Cy Twombly, his Blackboard paintings as well as his Treatise on the Veil.