Birth Morphologies
We can trace the material of ourselves to various origins:
the womb, star stuff, the beginning of matter itself. This mobile – made of branches, fiber, and kombucha-leather – balances origin morphologies and abstract fruits.
Study of Origins and Fruits
Kombucha brewers are familiar with the Mother, which is also called a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast (scoby). This cellulose scoby dries into a delightfully translucent and strong leather. I use the Mother material as a foundation of forms: carrying fibrous ‘fruits’ and a pointed container that reminds me of expanding universe diagrams as well as human anatomical shapes.
I love the terminology of mushrooms as the fruiting bodies of fungi. However, my co-creator in this work is a single-celled fungi, a yeast, which does not use a fruiting body to reproduce. Instead, I produced my own fruits of fleshy Mother and soft fiber in this work.
How do we balance an understanding of our material selves with the knowledge of where we came from?
Media: Cellulose (kombucha leather), wood, wire, wool fiber, europium glowing powder
Exhibited
Saranac Art Projects – Spokane, 2022