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The Four Horseman

Nour Mobarak

Nour Mobarak is an actress whom did a single exhibition of mushroom planets and moons accompanied with sound because although we can’t hear it on our audio level, but planets and moons all make some type of sound. She grows the fungus inside and it punctures through the spheres at different points to where the fungus will begin to overgrow the sphere and grow to its shape.

Xiaojing Yan

Yan uses pine needles, Lingzhi mushrooms, pearls and cicada sheddings. Her focus is on how nature can transcend traditional Chinese art. These pieces in particular are cultivated mushrooms on a female wood bust. She also casted mushrooms with bronze to create “fairy ring”.

Mushrooms: The art design and future of fungi

This exhibition was curated by Francesca Gavin and it included artists who’s works represented their love for fungi. Cry Tombly, Takashi Homma, Beatrix Potter. The shoes are made of mushrooms so they are recycled product of mycelium, and some of the pieces just represent mushrooms or use them in fun and different ways. Like the energy panel powered by mushrooms, and the sculpture of mushrooms growing on a plants roots.

Seana Gavin

Mycelium has also been found to be able to send and receive communications with fungus, trees and other vegetation. Prior to the 2000s the usage of mushrooms in medical research was banned up until the Shroom Boom in the mid 2010s, where mushrooms are now allowed to have its psychedelic affects researched but as well as its the network of nature it runs through. Gavin is a mixed media collage artists, in this specific series they represent the mushrooms as something integrated into other futuristic societies. Mushrooms even as people, alluding to the fact there the mycelium network has no central brain yet all of these things communicate with each other.

Takashi Homma

Homma is a Japenese urban photographer. He produced a book called “Mushrooms from the Forest” of mushrooms specifically from nuclear contaminated areas because they absorb the radiation from the soil and thrive. Mushrooms are actually the potential key to reducing global pollution. They absorb CO2 in the soil, reducing the CO2 emitted into the air.

I did some research on plants used as art, whether in the botanical gardens (ATL), or plants combined into architecture, or fossils, moss and wood used as art pieces. Th second painting was really something that pushed me to use mushrooms in my blue painting.

Amongst my research of mushrooms, I came across this article. I’m also a really big fan of Star Wars and Star Trek, and more recently I’ve finished the series Star Trek Discovery. My point in mentioning this is that the Discover is powered by a spore drive which is thus created and then piloted by Paul Stamets who is the gentleman in this article that mentioned the possibility of fungi being the plan that we use to terraform other planets. Fungi were the first organisms that came to land, munching rocks, and fungi gave birth to animals. Essentially we are cousins of fungi, and there’s actually a lot of TV shows and movies that work with this concept. My art doesn’t look exactly like my reference images, but this article and the show kind of inspired that purpose to paint mushrooms that might not necessarily be here. (Won’t let me post the link)

Faith Ringgold

Although her name is what attracted me to her work. (Lol) Once I actually saw it I loved everything she represented. Ringgold is a painter and and mixed media sculpture. Before the 70s she mostly painted but then after she started making painted quilts as she will as quilts that literally told her story. One of her written quilts is features at the Newark Museum, but she quilts because it was necessary for her to tell her story. Her autobiography was declined to be published and she decided to illustrate her life in into her artwork.

Kerry James Marshall

I think we can all see the theme of art I love, but Marshall incorporates the history of grand scale paintings to his colorful and abstract portraits. His works are inspired by his youth in LA where he saw the city before and after the race riots. However he depicts the positivity of his community in his works.

Titus Kaphnar

Kapnar confronts history by dismantling classic art pieces in Western paintings. He addresses social and political concerns of the era and connects it with his own life and understanding of our history. I see a lot of his paintings as peeling past white washed history and looking towards black history during that period. He’s one of my favorite artists and if y’all are interested he’s got a TED talk.

Abagail Deville

Deville focus on lost black history, gentrification and racial violence through her sculpture and huge exhibits. Deville uses discarded and found objects in the area to create her pieces and connect them to the physical space. This is also the artist I did my presentation on. 😊

Shinique Smith

Smith is inspired by worn down and forgotten objects uses fabric work along with other mediums to connect to urban existence. The question of what do us as materialistic people value and in value is challenged by our cultural and societal beliefs. Connecting with the African American woman, herself, and black culture. Smith presents our valued and in valued objects in a way that shows the chaos and restriction of our lives through the unusual presentation of everyday objects in her work.

Mickalene Thomas

Thomas looked at art history and famous paintings of women and through that, Thomas visualized those older artworks and she positioned the women in her work just like them. Thomas made a contemporary version of these historical paintings that represented female sexuality, beauty, and power.

Artist Statement 🍄🍄

My artwork is inspired by the life cycle of mycelium and fungus. The beauty of it, how it decays. In all of my works I’ve added a dimensional element and texture, with either the usage of food seasoning or actual mushrooms. I used materials to create tree fungus, slime mold, orange peel fungus, moss, and earth star fungus. My work is a way for me to represent the different types, looks, feel, smell of mushrooms and fungi in our forests and how they effect their environment. How they might potentially effect my canvas. As I come back to my works I expect them to change.

I think these turned out pretty well. I’ll actually hang them up, I love how the colors I chose melted together,

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