Continuum | UIS Visual Arts Gallery, Springfield Il.

September 2024

The Pilsbury Factory has been a source of inspiration for this show and many of the works included incorporate found paper recovered from the site. Below is a brief glimpse into one of the open house events held there to showcase the work of graffiti artists who also took inspiration from the factory to create their art.

Its sometimes challenging as an artist to maintain the steady pace and motivation required to continuously create, and this is especially true when there is no specific end game in mind. Having a goal to work toward, and a deadline to meet, has been a welcome inspiration, and it came at a fortuitous time. The invitation to exhibit just happened to coincide with a new direction in my work that I recently embarked on along with my colleague Leslie Stalter as we began a collaborative project that we plan to show at our exhibition next year at the SAA.

My work has always been inspired by nature. I guess it’s been over a decade ago now that I became fascinated with the idea of macro and micro that is ever present in nature. What has always been so compelling for me about nature is the combination of intelligent design and how there are pervasive and mysterious connections within the natural world. The more you look, the more you find these connections in seemingly unrelated places. 

Its pretty easy to appreciate the beauty in the natural world, but we as humans have always had a lopsided view of nature, and focusing only on the beauty is one example. As I’ve continued to understand nature through my work as an artist, I’ve been able to appreciate the continuum that necessarily must incorporate oppositional elements. The idea of creation and destruction - the dark and the light- is something ive come to appreciate equally - one cannot exist without the other and this lesson is apparent everywhere in nature. Therein lies the evidence that art is life is art. Nature is as beautiful as it is brutal, and its impossible to fully appreciate our natural world without reckoning with this formidable duality. 

I think we as humans regard the kingdom of fungi in a tentative way - we tend to focus on the more contemptuous qualities of fungus without fully understanding the miraculousness of how and why it functions. As a result, we’ve only just started scratching the surface with respect to our understanding fungi. Antibiotics are probably the shining example, but the list is ever growing in terms of the power of fungi to solve human problems. 

Given this dubious relationship, it’s not surprising that It wasn’t until the 70s that fungi received its status as it’s own kingdom and I think many people still do not realize that fungi are neither plants nor animals. The more you consider fungi, the more you see that they are everywhere, literally everywhere, within us as well as around us. And the same interconnectedness in terms of macro and micro is also pervasive within the world of fungi. 

So, like the rest of the world, I’ve been relatively late to the game in exploring fungi, and this new body of work represents an exploration at it’s beginning stages. What has struck me as particularly compelling is how appropriate this kingdom is to consider as a source of wisdom and guidance in these perilous times we live in. 

Our current global environmental, social and political crises have one overarching theme, and that is the need for community. And there is perhaps no better metaphor of an egalitarian community than the kingdom of fungi because reciprocity and transformation are so central to its function and purpose. The symbiotic relationship fungi has with plants and animals is only matched by its transformative powers to reuse, recycle and transform waste into the building blocks that sustain life. 

I think it’s nature, and specifically Fungi, that we all must look to in beginning to address where we’ve fallen short as humans, and I hope this work will allow you to be both inspired and hopeful that we, as members of the natural world, can learn from the transformative and communal lessons that fungi has to teach us. 

~September, 2024