~ Murals ~

~ Mushroom Art ~

These pieces are drawings carved directly onto the pore surface of a kind of wild mushroom commonly called "Artist Conks." Each specimen was sustainability harvested by the artist herself in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan during the summer of 2022. While the mushrooms are fresh, their porous side is white, but it turns brown when scratched or touched, making the process of creating a composition a very delicate one. Once the drawings are finished, the mushrooms are allowed to dry, and the images are preserved on their surfaces for decades without any kind of varnish.

I am truly fond of this technique because it makes me feel more connected to the forests in which these mushrooms grow. I believe that this is a highly sustainable method of creating art: only the fruiting body of the mushroom is harvested, leaving the mycelium to keep growing and creating more mushrooms next year – a process no more damaging to the organism than the plucking of an apple from an apple tree. The act of collecting the specimens also serve to scatter their spores around the forest, thus contributing to their reproductive cycle. 

       Ganoderma applanatum grows all around the United States, but it doesn’t make a profitable canvas for art stores and big companies due to its delicate nature and the short time frame for creating a piece (only a few days) before the mushrooms start to dry out. The search for the mushroom, the act of harvesting, and the creation of the artwork itself are all practices in mindfulness which establish a direction relationship between the artist, her medium, and Nature as a whole. 

Please contact me about any inquiries or commissioned pieces.