Though mushrooms are often thought of as plants, fungi are actually their own kingdom, and are genetically closer to humans than to plants. The largest life form on the planet is a mushroom, and yet, each scoop of soil can contain dozens of microscopic species. Though we generally think of fungi as food, they also provide potent medicines like antibiotics, help us bake bread through yeast, and increasingly, are being used to create everything from clothing to packaging.
But below the fruiting mushroom you see in the forest is a vast network of mycelium, and through this, trees can both communicate and send one another nutrients. Mushrooms and trees have a symbiotic relationship, and avid mushroom hunters know which trees to look for as they forage.
In this show, there are both foraged mushrooms, carved with the leaves of their host oak tree, and mushrooms that I have grown, some in low light to produce sprawling, alien-like forms. If you look closely at some of the wood pieces, you can still see the thin white threads of mycelium which I tried not to disrupt. What we don’t know about mushrooms overwhelms what we do know, but on this changing planet, it's clear our interdependence with them is as important as they are for the trees.