Title: Mushrooms

Material: bark, pinecones, sticks, nuts, leaves, foam

Size: approximately 14 inches and 9 inches in height, 9 inches and 6 inches in width (mushroom cap)

Decomposition is an essential part of the life sustaining processes that occur on Earth. My first thought that came to me when I read about the criteria for this project was simply one word, “mushroom”. Mushrooms are incredible little organisms that serve a plethora of other functions besides being nature’s recycling bin, therefore I knew I wanted mushrooms to be the staple of my piece. The base of my mushroom is composed of brittle foam that practically falls apart at the touch. All I needed was for something to act as a base to adhere to the materials I was going to collect. I first started out by foraging around my yard for stuff that I knew were decomposing or soon to be decomposing/dead. I ended up gathering fallen pine cones, leaves, sticks, nuts and tree bark.  I then proceeded to disassemble nature’s ingredients that I collected, I individually plucked the pieces of the pine cone, broke the bark into pieces, snapped the sticks down to size and hammered the nuts into bits. The pieces of the pine cone and bark were meticulously glued to create the stem of the mushroom, while the pieces of stick were glued to create the gills on the underside of the mushroom cap. The cap was covered in a layer of homemade glue, composed of skim milk, gelatin and tap water, and adhering to it are the pieces of crushed nuts and layers of leaves. I believe my piece to be an ecological resurrection, by taking these dead and decaying materials from the ground I was able to recycle them into the shape of a mushroom, the very definition of perishing and flourishing.