field, Tara Dougans, 2024 – glazed stoneware, raw clay, brick, 12 x 16 inches
our senses grow, Rachel Crummey, 2021 – spore print, the Bentway Oct 22 – from original research ‘What can fungi teach us about improvisation?’

Sympoeisis // Field

invitation

we understand time as a spiral, a cocoon, a shell, a manifold
move at the pace of the nervous system
orient by fermentation wisdom,
Time is a key ingredient

// there are many ways to be a fungus

we, the dense web,
flow increasingly curious about redefining studio practice as one of encounter ~
our senses grow;

how do we cultivate a means to sense into a larger field of relationship
how does a relational ecology unfold in the context of a studio arts practice

what needs to die
what feels alive

a beginning and an end (that will end),
and then begin again

we, a field, a web
a song

04.18. 2024

~~~~

Janina, Rachel Crummey, 2023 ~ mixed media on canvas, hemp, reishi mycelium, wood, 66 x 44 inches

Dense Web // Reverberating Midlines – SALT Vol. 1 09.01.22 – 08.01.23 ~ printed zine, ink on paper, 7 x 10 inches

L – Bloom (shaggy), Rachel Crummey, 2023 ~ mixed media on canvas, hemp, reishi mycelium, wood, 21 x 14 inches
R – Lemniscate (burst), Rachel Crummey, 2023 ~ mixed media on canvas, hemp, reishi mycelium, wood, 21 x 14 inches

installation view, Sympoeisis // Fruiting Bodies @ the plumb – Aug 4th – Sept 3rd, 2023

L – sphere, Tara Dougans, 2023, stoneware, burlap, hemp, reishi mycelium
R –Spiral (the purple one), Rachel Crummey, 2023, mixed media on canvas, hemp, reishi mycelium, wood, 21 x 14 inches

Diotima, Rachel Crummey, 2023 ~ mixed media on canvas, hemp, reishi mycelium, wood, 66 x 44 inches

lingham, Tara Dougans, 2023, stoneware, glaze, hemp, reishi mycelium, 16” x 4.5” x 14.25” (growing)
diamond, Tara Dougans, 2023, stoneware, glaze, 15” x 6” x 13”

Janina, Rachel Crummey, 2023, mixed media on canvas, hemp, reishi mycelium, wood, 66 x 44 inches

L – Spiral (the purple one), Rachel Crummey, 2023, mixed media on canvas, hemp, reishi mycelium, wood, 21 x 14 inches
R – detail, lemniscate, Tara Dougans, 2023 ~ stoneware, glaze, sand, hemp, reishi mycelium, 22.5” x 6.5” x 27” (growing)

lingham, Tara Dougans, 2023 ~ stoneware, glaze, hemp, reishi mycelium, 16” x 4.5” x 14.25” (growing)

lemniscate, Tara Dougans, 2023, stoneware, glaze, sand, hemp, reishi mycelium, 22.5” x 6.5” x 27” (growing)

detail, Bloom (shaggy), Rachel Crummy, 2023 ~ mixed media on canvas, hemp, reishi mycelium, wood, 21 x 14 inches

L – LP3, 2023 ~ stoneware, glaze, hemp, reishi mycelium, 4.75” x 4.75’ x 6.25”
R – LP2 and LP3, Tara Dougans, 2023 ~ stoneware, glaze, hemp, reishi mycelium, 4” x 4” x 5”

installation view, generative root ~ Sympoeisis // Fruiting Bodies @ the plumb – Aug 4th – Sept 3rd, 2023

pelvis, Tara Dougans, 2023, wood, approx 30 1/2” x 6 3/4” x 27 1/2”

Sympoeisis // Fruiting Bodies @ the plumb – Aug 4th – Sept 3rd, 2023
Photos by @lfdocumentation

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Sympoeisis // Fruiting Bodies – Exhibition Text

Jade stone and alder flower essence combined with oil paint, the sea surrounding Fogo Island, pieces of plastic picked from the shoreline, burnette horses counted from the car; Ganoderma Lucidum merged with hemp fibre, canvas, and wood within its tapestry of tissue; Streams of sonicscape, the soundfield of the breeze amongst the blooming sumac along Caledonia Road and movement near the gazebo; Scoby — once a source of slightly effervescent kombucha; once a slippery surface floating and fermenting sweet tea — hangs as a flag, mother, motherland; aura of the earth, electromagnetic noise from various recent everydays and early days; lichen on stone, the texture of a meadow with blades of grass cupping dew, twigs, roots intertwined deep; a duck nest along with duck feathers and duck eggs, a steady single drip drip drip drip drip drip drip from the basement ceiling; fruiting reishi mushroom filling the form of ceramic vessels: sphere, shelllike cornucopia, pelvis, and lemniscate as in the geometry equation with two loops which meet at zero also referred to as the infinity symbol also seen as a eight lying lazy; paper pulp fossilized record of touch pinched with fingers, calyx: the leaflike sepals which enclose the petals, a cup-shaped cavity, and dorsal: relating to the back of an animal, plant, or organ.

Sympoeisis, which Donna Haraway writes “means making-with...It is a word for worlding-with,in company,”1is a kindred approach of the exhibiting artists: Peter Campbell, Rachel Crummey, Tara Dougans, Erin Hunt, Luke Loseth, Sara Maston, Joy Wong, and Thea Yabut. Collaboration and cross-pollination are their chosen ways of creating. This applies to their relationship with peers and extends across species and earth — particularly in the case of Crummey and Dougans who convene weekly within the framework of SALT (The Sound / Institute of Sensual Awareness, Language and Touch), for improvisatory somatic practice consisting of meditation, sounding, movement, and drawing. Their initial research questions, ‘What can fungi teach us about improvisation?’ and ‘What can listening together teach us about emergence?’, draw the participating constellation of artists together.

These fruiting bodies are the result of time listening, sensing, digging and digesting, composting, tending to, caring for, and percolating. Each exhibiting artist has crafted a unique process in which contemplation and emergence are key and yet, the urgency of “our times for learning again, or for the first time, how to become less deadly, more response-able, more attuned”2 is also present.

Text by Ashley Culver

1 Donna J. Haraway, Staying with the Trouble (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2016), 56.

2 Donna J. Haraway, Staying with the Trouble (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2016), 98.

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____________

not knowing is most intimate, Tara Dougans, fired porcelain, approx 7” x 10”, 2022

invitation

we are curious about other voices, other intelligences, other worlds. SALT // sympoeisis is an open invitation / framework to develop literacy and capacity for inhabiting / embodying alternatives
asking, how can we cultivate ourselves like mushrooms? what can listening together teach us about collective emergence ?

what if we knew our edges to be soft, porous?
our organisms as processes: exploratory, irregular tendencies // living, growing opportunistic investigations
wiley forest sprites // playing to play // compost polyphonies

how do we practice making with
how do we practice generative attunement

exploring sensory relationships between process, presence and place;
connecting with mycelial networks as complex, emergent models for making with
supported by an ongoing exchange / apprenticeship with Ganoderma Multipileum (Reishi)

how do we cultivate right relationship with change

(( start by sitting quietly with any living thing ~~~ ))

~~~~~~

together, we meet 1 x week to breathe, sound and listen
drawing as documentation ~ following a line // form forming form
drawing as hyphae ~ branching and fusing

below, a meandering unfolding map of our rhizome
cross-pollination // emergent choreography // research thread

not knowing what the thing is ~~~~~~
afterward, it never was as it was before

SALT – sympoeisis // fruiting bodies
dense web // reverberating midlines volume 1

09.01.2022 – 09.03.2023

~~~~~