Back to the studio first time after coming back from over a month in Poland trying to write and make art while simultaneously mothering, wifeing and daughtering. My fascination with tree mushrooms continued developing through multiple experiments with: tree resin, impresin in a vacuum chamber and baking and finally a gold leaf application. While working on this and the wings thinking why and how to combine all this with the handmade lace from Koniaków village. I don’t know if any of this is making any sense, everyone around me seems to think I’ve gone insane, I just keep on going I guess…
IDEA: to make my Marzanna creature made from wicker, jute string and lace stand up, or maybe she becomes a tree, either way I decided the tree mushrooms need to play a role. They have been fascinating me for a while, ever since I remembered my great grandmother used to make giant candle holders out of them, I used to seeing them everywhere in great grandmas house in the forest. It was such a positive memory, I just want to go back there, to the forest, where it was all female generations in one place: great grandmother, her sisters, my grandmother, my mother and me. She is the tree. The tree is her
First I did some sketches combining willow, lace, tree resin and tree mushrooms. Then I found some mushrooms while I was running
Experiments with mushrooms and natural resin, inspired by the Jura Shust exhibition
The effect: surprisingly beautiful. I love the warmth of the colour and the fact that it enhanced the mushrooms natural yellow/orange shade. It became shiny and golden like amber or honey. But it’s fragile
Mistakes: not knowing how quickly it would harden, I didn’t manage to pour it all out of the pot and now the vintage brass pot is most probably permanently covered in dried up resin. It does however look beautiful. The mushroom on lace, there’s something about it, reading about greek mythology and how most pregnancies in it were caused by rape, how the way it was described almost celebrated it, makes me so disgusted. Simultaneously thinking about Julia Kristeva, who in 1980 “suggests that the relationship to the semiotic that is achieved through the making of art can be paralleled with that of giving birth”
And if I am trying to give birth to my Art right now, I am so embedded in the process, I am trying so hard to create “something I am proud of” and it feels like I’m birthing it, but the pain is mental, I’m trying so hard to figure out what it is my head hurts. I don’t think as of now that my art baby is thriving.
Experiments with mushrooms and impresin, first creating a void, then forcing the liquid resin into the structure of the mushroom with vacuum chamber, then baking it at 100 degrees for 1hour
Results: first of all, the colour is lost completely. It looks dark brown, burnt and disgusting. Secondly, the stench of a burned mushroom mixed with burned plastic is hard to describe. Poisonous.
Is it a huge fail?
Is it a brilliant discovery?
No idea. But I do like the effect of the mushroom becoming hard as plastic and I do like the weird plastic residue around the base. It’ s like the plastic was trying to hide in the mushroom but somehow didn’t manage to hide itself completely. Will they let me take this on a plane to the UK?
In London in my studio another experiment: turning a tree mushroom gold with some glue and gold leaf, surprisingly pleasant effect, not sure where I will go with this
