Spathe and Spadix

Haunter of slagheap, meadow, and hedgerow. North Braddock by way of Appalachian Ohio by way of West Philly.

[spatheandspadix]

Throwback: one of my looks for a 2-day "Leopocalypse" party in Athens 10 years ago. The theme for night 2 included "moths and spiders."

[in-the-eye-of-whimsy]

The art of Kathleen Ryan

[spatheandspadix]

Rigorous Institution at Concatenate Fest 2024

[spatheandspadix]

Atomic Prey at Concatenate Fest 2024

[spatheandspadix]

Going to the Ecological Society of America annual meeting in Salt Lake City? Catch our research:

Plants with refined taste: Plant community composition on abandoned slag heaps is directly affected by slope-aspect and angle of incline.

Restoration Ecology late-breaking poster session, Thursday 7/30

[spatheandspadix]

Cool house built with serpentinite in Lancaster, PA. You find these buildings around southeastern Pennsylvania near the serpentine barren belt but the stone is soft and doesn't last long so they tend to need a lot of repairs.

[spatheandspadix]

Necroprophecy and Hell is Here under a bridge in Cleveland, 6/19

[spatheandspadix]

My head is so huge I look like a Kev Adams gobbo

[spatheandspadix]

Playing with one of my favs on the 22nd, I am gonna be just insufferable. This is the only local show we have for the season that I'm aware of.

[spatheandspadix]

Tonight is gonna be cool. I'm running over as fast as I can after my seitan job so I am gonna drink 1000 Celsius and be in peak Night Goblin Fanatic mode. This is THE Pittsburgh Crust Night of the Summer and I am gonna be INSUFFERABLE.

[spatheandspadix]

Skallar at Concatenate Fest 2025

[heaveninawildflower]

'Still life with poppies and butterflies' (19th century) by Adele Schuster (1812 - 1890).

Oil on canvas.

Wikimedia.

[sandmandaddy69]

Guillaume Sorel

[spatheandspadix]

I used to despair about my prospects of getting a Normie Job bc I'd been in academia so long and didn't have relevant experience or references but now I am blessed with farm and seitan gigs and having a really good time! I technically have 4 jobs right now, yr goblin bro is TOILING

[stamp-it-to-me]

a 1958 Romanian stamp depicting porcini mushrooms

[ID: a postage stamp with an illustration of porcini mushrooms at various stages of growth. end ID]

[spatheandspadix]

[spatheandspadix]

Felt like a Cool Sexy Rocker That Parties, might delete

[spatheandspadix]

Very proud to have a piece in The Dairy Barn's Fibers of Appalachia exhibition back in Athens. Got to go to the opening and can't praise the show enough! Incredible mix of history, stories of materials, and contemporary work. There were so many threads of connection: fellow leaf enjoyers, favorite plants, post-agricultural landscapes. My piece is (perhaps unsurprisingly) a result of tugging at threads of too many kinds of legacy effects in the landscape and my own life and body. I'm inevitably a sad goblin whether I want to be or not!

Slag Slopes Love Letter / I Too am a Ruined Landscape

This work depicts three leaves collected at the Nine Mile Run slagheap in Pittsburgh. Slag from the steel mills in the Monongahela Valley was dumped here from the 1920s to 1970s, with the valley ultimately covered in a moonscape of 20 stories of industrial waste. The elm, cottonwood, and bigtooth aspen shown here establish on post-industrial sites as plant communities assemble despite the inhospitable environment. This piece is a rumination on wastelands and spoilheaps as sanctuary and my kin through shared trauma, whether environmental, physical, or emotional. Burned edges suggest flames of the blast furnace, flames of molten slag, fires of change and how survival feels like emerging into a burnt-out landscape asking “what now?”, waiting for seeds the winds might bring. Sometimes survival isn't a story of triumph or moral victory but just continuing to exist and take new forms as a ruin among ruins.