News / Events

Lichen Pipeline performance

| Amy Youngs

Tuesday, April 22, 2025 Lichen Pipeline

  • 3:30pm – 4:30: Join the Lichen Pipeline, a participatory art performance celebrating lichens as important contributors to our terrestrial ecosystems. Come to the center of the South Oval to collaborate with the Lichen Likers as we braid, tie, and link together to embody a kind of sculptural support system that brings lichen and humans together as “biological infrastructure”.
  • At 4:30pm all participants are invited to line up and join the parade to continue extending the Lichen Pipeline further.
  • Location: Middle of the South Oval. Look for our fabric braids and parade float with tree branches

Earth Day Parade

  • Location: Starts from Ohio State University South Oval, behind the Faculty Club.
  • 4:30pm – 5:30pm: Parade starts from the South Oval. We will walk single file along the blue line, which marks the underground stream of Neil Run. Our procession will continue to follow the historic Neil Run waterway, beyond the Ohio Union, and into the neighborhoods to the East of High Street, to end at Iuka Ravine – where the water that once flowed there has left an enduring mark on the land.

Lichen Symposium

| Amy Youngs

The Liken Likers are presenting at, “What’s Lichen?” a Lichen Symposium at the University of Minnesota. As part of the Culture, Healing, Art, Technology, Nature (CHANT) collaborative, Doosung Yoo and Amy Youngs from our group, have been involved with helping to plan this event. The keynote speaker is Laurie Palmer, author of The Lichen Museum, a book that has been central to our work. There will also be art, lichen walks, lichen scientist conversations, movement workshops, and interdisciplinary conversations on “learning with lichens” and speculative futures. See our full schedule of events.

Lichen Likers join Earth Day 2025

| clemente.49

Every day is Earth Day, but April 22 is when we celebrate.

It is the 55th Anniversary of Earth Day – let’s celebrate! You are cordially invited to the Living Art and Ecology Lab’s 2025 Earth Day Events and Parade.

What: We are having a parade and participatory performance on campus in honor of Earth Day and invite you to join us! Together with various classes, student organizations, and partners from across campus, the parade is composed of costumes, banners, and floats dedicated to the soil, air, and waters upon which we all depend for our shared existence. This event is a celebration of joy for everything that makes life on this floating blue marble possible!

When: April 22nd, 2025. 3:30pm Participatory Performance. 4:30 Parade starts See the Full Schedule of Events

Where: Meet on the South Oval. Parade goes from the East end of Mirror Lake and moving towards Iuka Ravine.

How: For a simple way to join, show up on the South Oval wearing blue, green, or brown to represent the water, soil, lichen, or plants of the Earth. Costumes relating to the spirit of the event are also encouraged. You can also become part of the Lichen Pipeline participatory performance by arriving at 3:30 to don an artistic costumes provided by the Lichen Likers.

Who: Current collaborators in this celebration include the Living Art & Ecology Lab, the Lichen Learning group, known as the Lichen Likers and Lost Waters research group; SUSTAINs Living Community; Facilities, Operations, and Development; Planning, Architecture, and Real Estate, The Emerging Technology Studio; Knowlton School of Architecture; The Soil Culture Group; Art 5101 Eco Art Class; Art 3001 and 4503 Glass Classes; Design 4650 Collaborative Design Studio

See the Full Schedule of Events

Living Wearables Workshop with Artist Alex Buchan

| blue.984

The Lichen Likers had the opportunity to invite Lichen enthusiast, and Ohio University MFA candidate, Alex Buchan to lead a collaborative workshop centered around living wearables. Alex shared his innovative techniques to incorporate plants into garments that don’t just hold life but are able to actively keep plants alive. 

Alex has a background in sculpture and aims to utilize waste materials and discarded items. For our workshop, we repurposed trash bags to be an impermeable layer to our clothes and burlap sacks as the breathable cloth for our foliage. Reimagining the possibilities of these materials, gave way to consider other alternative materials such as scrap fabric, commercial waste, and even food scraps. Many participants thought of unique ways to show off their plant life. Some construction methods include skirts, tops, bags, vests, and ties. During this workshop there was a collaborative nature of learning, participants and instructors alike were able to take away new ideas while sharing helpful tips and tricks. 

Overall, I learned a lot from this workshop and I hope to make more iterations of living garments as I experiment with this medium. During this most recent session, I made a burlap/fabric top that holds micro-greens and a few propagated leaves. The plants inside the shirt are sprouting slowly but I enjoy seeing my design grow and change with the living elements.

Workshop: Lichens & Queer Ecological Bodies

| Amy Youngs

Event: This talk and movement-based workshop explore queer ecological perspectives and experiences of embodiment that disrupt normative constructions of the body as bounded, separate, and impermeable. We will discuss and practice strategies for developing a greater felt sense of our own bodies as well as how our felt sense of self expands or transforms through moving in and out of intentional relationships with other bodies—both human and more-than-human. Who and how else might we become as we traverse promiscuous embodied relations through our movement? What more becomes possible when we invite human and more-than-human others into our bodies through moving together? How might these experiences shape not only how we approach ourselves and one another, but also our collective movements and our relationship with a planet in crisis?
No previous movement experience needed.

Biography: Michael J. Morris is a dance artist, astrologer, tarot reader, writer, and educator. They hold a PhD in Dance Studies from The Ohio State University, and they were a Visiting Assistant Professor at Denison University from 2015-2021 where they taught in Dance, Women’s and Gender Studies, Queer Studies, and Environmental Studies. They were also visiting faculty at SNDO—the School for New Dance Development—at the Academy of Theatre and Dance in Amsterdam from 2020-2023. Michael’s choreographic and performance work draws influences from Japanese Butoh, ritual practices, and early formalist postmodern dance and has been presented at universities, galleries, community spaces, theaters, bars and nightclubs, films, and domestic spaces. In 2019, Michael founded Co Witchcraft Offerings through which they offer astrology and tarot consultations, movement-based rituals, and workshops to support people in cultivating more meaningful living while pursuing personal and collective healing and liberation.

Earth Day Parade: Get Involved!

| clemente.49

You are cordially invited to the Living Art and Ecology Lab’s 2025 Earth Day Parade. Join the Lichen Likers in celebrating the Earth!

What: We are hosting a parade in honor of Earth Day and invite you to join us! Together with various classes, student organizations, and partners from across campus, the parade is composed of costumes, banners, and floats dedicated to the soil, air, and waters upon which we all depend for our shared existence. This event is a celebration of joy for everything that makes life on this floating blue marble possible!

When: April 22nd, 2025 at 4pm

Where: Meet on the South Oval. Parade starts at 4:30, from the East end of Mirror Lake and moving towards Iuka Ravine.

How: For a simple way to join, show up on the South Oval wearing blue, green, or brown to represent the Earth. Costumes relating to the spirit of the event are also encouraged. Interested in building a float, carrying a banner, or coordinating involvement for your student org? We request that you submit an interest form here and read the guidelines enclosed.

Who: Current collaborators in this celebration include the Living Art & Ecology Lab’s Lichen Likers and Lost Waters research groups; SUSTAINs Living Community; Facilities, Operations, and Development; Planning, Architecture, and Real Estate, The Emerging Technology Studio; Knowlton School of Architecture; The Soil Culture Group; Art 5101 Eco Art Class; Art 3001 and 4503 Glass Classes; Design 4650 Collaborative Design Studio

“Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.”  –Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

Living Wearables Workhop

| Amy Youngs

As a symbiotic being, lichen’s fungal partner learns to collaborate with their green, photosynthetic partner. How can we practice collaborating closely with plants in their living form? Can we wear them without harming them? What do we take? What do we give?

Join our experimental, hands-on workshop with Alex Buchan, to explore making wearables with living plants.

Alex Buchan works as a prospector, excavating modern masculinity through sculptures and installations to present a caring, queer alternative that prioritizes empathy and resilience. His constructions of recontextualized objects and building materials combined with large scale prints offer windows into social webs that are often overlooked. As part of his ongoing symbiosis with the Lichen Likers, he focuses on ways to utilize waste stream materials to support life, with vestments that encourage us to think about the ways we interact with plants on a daily basis. He received his BFA in Sculpture from The Ohio State University, and is currently pursuing his MFA at Ohio University.

Lichen, Like You – A Lively Exhibition

| clemente.49

Step into this installation. Take a long, slow breath. Become a part of the lichen world. Real and fabricated lichens embrace you, as part of the web of life.

The Lichen Likers are a human organism that is learning with lichens and drawing inspiration from their resilient, collaborative, and queer lifestyles. Embodying the symbiosis of fungi and algae, we create art that gives voice to this overlooked, communal lifeform.

At the end of a busy semester at the Ohio State University, we made some time to share some of our group’s experiments in the Department of Art Open House.

Thank you to the Global Arts and Humanities Discovery Theme for supporting our work!1

  1. https://globalartsandhumanities.osu.edu/research-funding/arts-creation ↩︎

Antioch College Visit

| blue.984

On October 17th, Lichen Likers Amy Youngs and Madison Blue took a visit to Antioch college to assist Professor Kim Landsbergen with an art and ecology focused class lesson. 

After a presentation from Amy on the Lichen Likers and the Living Art and Ecology Lab, the group was able to have a class conversation about what we each notice about lichen. We were able to more effectively achieve this by viewing lichen samples collected under class microscopes. The class was also able to have a discussion about the ethics of using nature for the purpose of art and how to ethically incorporate it into a piece of work. 

The second half of class involved a hands on activity, the class collectively created artworks of or inspired by lichens. Some students took a more realistic approach to the assignment, while others used an abstract representation of lichen. 

From my personal perspective, it was interesting to see how each person interpreted lichen differently in their work. I had a lot of fun drawing a colorful portrait of lichen from a screen projection on the wall. By spending time with lichen we were able to notice and appreciate details we didn’t see before.