Those Who Feed Us: Open Call for Art

Open call for art flyer for the show "those who feed us" in celebration of ohio soil health week 2024

Join the Living Art and Ecology Lab in celebrating Ohio Soil Health Week through this open call for work! This short exhibition of juried and invited artists seeks to appreciate those who feed us through building and maintaining our soils. We invite you to submit work that explores soil as community: from microbes and mycelium, to plants and people, and beyond. Artists working in all mediums are welcome to apply.

Applications are due by October 20th at 11:59pm.  Link to apply, and additional information on the show, can be found here.

We Are Hiring Students!

The Living Art and Ecology Lab is Hiring!

We are looking for ten undergraduate students to assist on two interdisciplinary research projects this year.

Photo of the Lichen Likers student-faculty group from last year, pictured with a 3D lichen model they created using augmented reality

Learning Lichen is an artistic research project supported by the Global Arts and Humanities Discovery Theme of Care, Culture, and Justice.  The project aims to promote public awareness of the valuable relationship between humans, non-humans, and our shared environment through combining art and science practices. This project is a continuation of the Lichen Likers project from 2024, which you can learn about here: https://u.osu.edu/lichen/. We are hiring six (6) Student Research Assistants to collaborate with faculty and staff in exploring the topic described above. Four (4) student assistants will focus on workshop development and art research while two (2) will focus on the media design through digital documentation and storytelling. Faculty Advisors for this project are Amy Youngs and Doo-sung Yoo in the Department of Art.

Link to Apply: https://www.myworkday.com/osu/d/inst/15$151691/9925$254268.htmld

 

Lost Waters is a collaborative project to investigate changes to the South Oval Landscape across time, centering around the disappearance of Neil Run stream in the 1890s. Two teams of students will be hired to assist on this project: one focused on researching changes to the landscape, and the other focused on using this data to create an Augmented Reality artwork visualizing these changes. This research and artwork will help contextualize modern environmental conditions on campus, focusing on how hydrological changes have impacted ecosystem services and local biodiversity. This project is supported by an Ohio State Energy Partners (OSEP) grant. Faculty Advisors for this project are Amy Youngs (Department of Art) and Jake Boswell (Landscape Architecture).

Link to Apply (Landscape Research): https://www.myworkday.com/osu/d/inst/15$392530/9925$254253.htmld

Link to Apply (Art and Tech): https://www.myworkday.com/osu/d/inst/15$151691/9925$254221.htmld

 

To apply to these projects or to learn more about each position, students should follow the links provided. You will be asked to enter your OSU login credentials to access the job postings.

 

The deadline to apply to these positions is listed as August 21st, but we may continue to accept applications until the end of the month.

 

Any questions can be sent to the Living Art and Ecology Lab Specialist Emma Kline at Kline.434@osu.edu.

 

April Workshops: Mycelium Sculpture with Visiting Artist Kate Klingbeil

up close look at inoculated sawdust

April 5th: Mycelium Sculpture with Visiting Artist Kate Klingbeil

crowd of students gathered for mycelium workshop with visiting artist Kate Klingbeil

We had a wonderful crowd in attendance for Kate Klingbeil’s visiting artist talk and sculpture workshop! OSU staff, students, faculty, and community members gathered in the print shop during this event to learn the practice of sculpting with mycelium. Klingbeil, whose work often focuses on celebrating the unseen realm of soil, was drawn to explore this medium for creation as a way of working in partnership with the more than human world. These pieces are a collaboration between the fungi and the sculptor to realize the final product.

 

image of a student mold sculpture; filled with inoculated substrate and shaped from cardboard and other waste stream materials

 

Sculpting with mycelium involves the creation of a mold that can be filled with substrate (sawdust, rice bran, etc) inoculated in fungal spawn. As the fungi grow, their mycelium spreads throughout the substrate to act as a ‘glue’, resulting in a form that will hold its shape once removed from the mold. Local waste stream materials– like takeout containers, empty bottles, and cardboard boxes– were provided to participants to make mold shapes. Substrates included soybean chaff, sawdust, hemp hurds, straw, and more. Examples of a student mold (left) and one created by the artist (right) can be seen above.

 

image of pots and pans in a sink, all full of sterilized substrate materials for using to build mycelium sculptures (eg, sawdust, straw, soybean chaff, etc)
Photo of the ‘Substrate Bar’ full of different materials for growing mycelium and filling our molds

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you to Kate for sharing this innovative artistic technique and letting us be part of your fungal network! Anyone interested in organizing a similar workshop with Kate should reach out to her at kateklingbeil@gmail.com. Participant photos from the event can also be submitted to this google form.

 

We have many people to thank for the execution of this wonderful event. Thank you to Jessie Horning and the Print Studio for providing space for this event to occur. Thank you to Natasha Woods and the Graduate Student Art Club for arranging this visiting artist. Thank you to the Feminist Research, Education, and Engagement (FREE) Center  for providing additional funding for workshop materials.
Thank you to the following local partners for donating substrate materials for students to use in this workshop as well: The Cannabis Museum in Athens, Ohio (hemp hurds), Woodcraft on Bethel Road (sawdust), and the McHale Soybean Breeding Program on Waterman Farm (soybean chaff).

In A Hotter House: Art Exhibition in the Biological Sciences Greenhouse

flyer for the art show "in a hotter house". This show opens April 22nd, 2024 from 8:00pm to 10:00pm in the biological sciences greenhouse at Ohio State university

April 22nd, 2024 from 8:00pm to 10:00pm

Biological Sciences Greenhouse, 332 W. 12th Avenue Columbus, Ohio 43210. Directions.

In an age of rapidly changing climate, the greenhouse is not the only hothouse of our own making. The artists of this exhibition are united by the question, what solutions to our warming climate may we learn from paying attention to plants?

Not sure how to get to the greenhouse? The Lichen Likers will be leading a group from Hopkins Hall to the Greenhouse as part of a participatory pre-show performance titled Fungal Entanglement: A Lichen Journey. Arrive on the steps of Hopkins Hall at 7pm for a meandering walk that will lead you to the show.

Spring 2024 Art Exhibition: In A Hotter House

In A Hotter House

An Earth Day art exhibition in a greenhouse on top of a parking garage.

The Biological Sciences Greenhouse mimics the warming effects of the Earth’s atmosphere to nurture a cornucopia of plant diversity and botanical research. On April 22nd from 8:00-10:00pm, it will also serve as a cultural hotbed to present an exhibition of phytophilic (plant-loving) art. This venue is uniquely situated atop a central parking garage on Ohio State University’s campus, carbon dioxide from the exhaust of humans and cars below drifting upwards to the plants who transform it into oxygen.

The Department of Art’s Living Art & Ecology Lab, partnered with resident artist Doosung Yoo, the Lichen Likers research group, eleven invited local artists, and this semester’s Art & Science course (co-taught by faculty members Amy Youngs and Iris Meier) cordially invite you to experience their artistic creations at this plant-human meeting ground. In an age of rapidly changing climate, the greenhouse is not the only hothouse of our own making. The artists of this exhibition* are united by the question, what solutions to our warming climate may we learn from paying attention to plants?

Address: Biological Sciences Greenhouse, 332 W. 12th Avenue Columbus, Ohio 43210. Directions.

Kate Klingbeil: Mycelium Sculpture Workshop and Artist Talk

MYCELIUM SCULPTURE WORKSHOP & ARTIST TALK
with
KATE KLINGBEIL
Build your own mycelium-based sculpture using found/recycled materials and local waste.
Kate Klingbeil (b. 1990) is a visual artist predominately work- ing with painting, sculpture, video, and most recently, fungi. Through highlighting the connections between our psyches and Earth’s subterranean landscapes, Kate’s work builds on the foundation of the root systems and fungal networks that hold us together.
She has recieved residency awards from Silver Art Projects, Oak Spring Garden Foundation, Marble House Projects, The Arts/Industries program at John Michael Kohler Art Center, Yaddo, and ACRE.
She has presented solo exhibitions with Steve Turner, Los An- geles. Hesse Flatow and at SPRING/BREAK, New York with Field Projects. Kate received a BFA in Printmaking from California College of the Arts in Oakland, CA in 2012. She currently resides in Milwaukee, WI, and is represented by Steve Turner in Los Angeles, CA. Presented by the Graduate Student Art Club, The Living Art Eco Lab
& The Ohio State Center for Feminist Research, Education and Engagement (FREE Center)
Friday, April 5th, 2024 4-7 pm Hopkins Hall Room 266
Print Shop
Limited Capacity Please RSVP & direct questions to woods.986

Join Visiting Artist Kate Klingbeil in the Hopkins Hall Print Shop (Room 266) on April 5th, 2024 4:00-7:00pm to make your own sculpture using fungal mycelium and up-cycled materials! Please see the above flyer for more details, and RSVP to woods.986@osu.edu to attend (seats are limited). More information on the artist’s work can be found here or on her Instagram @k8klingbeil.

This event is made possible through the Graduate Student Art Club, the Living Art and Ecology Lab, and generous funding from The Ohio State Center for Feminist Research, Education, and Engagement (FREE Center).