Installation Imagery

fig. 1-2 The Meeting (detail), 2018–2020, mycelium, boardroom office table and chairs, walnut, nylon, poplar, acrylic, hardware, performance, dimensions variable. Installation at The Galleries At Moore. Photo by Joseph Hu.

This project would not be possible without the labors of Ecovative Design, Firefly Finishes, Susan Jahoda of BFAMFAPhD, Esteban Kelly, Zaq Landsberg, Maine Thread Company, Alex Mallis, Meerkat Media Collective, Daniel Ramos, Hannah Rawe, and Corinne Spencer. Additional project support comes from Brandeis University, Bennington College, the New School, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Tenthaus in Oslo.

fig. 1-3 The Meeting, 2018–2020, mycelium, boardroom office table and chairs, walnut, nylon, poplar, acrylic, hardware, performance, dimensions variable. Installation at The Galleries At Moore. Photo by Joseph Hu.

The Meeting Game (in progress) invites interaction and rewrites the meeting script. At the boardroom table, facilitation objects are available for use, to encourage new forms of interpersonal exchange. Visitors are invited to watch the video, learn how to play the game, and roll a ball that corresponds to a way of speaking. In doing so, viewers may become more aware of the flow of dialog in any conversation. This game, developed in collaboration with the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives’ (USFWC) Executive Director, Esteban Kelly, will continue to be refined by the USFWC in nonart settings and also throughout the semester in workshops and public programs with the artist.

The single-channel video made possible by Alex Mallis, director of photography and editor, and Meerkat Media. Meerkat is a production company cooperative and arts collective committed to making films through a non-hierarchical collaborative process.

fig. 1-4 The Meeting (detail), 2018- 2020, mycelium, boardroom office table and chairs, walnut, nylon, poplar, acrylic, hardware, performance, dimensions variable. Installation at The Galleries At Moore. Photo by Joseph Hu.

A marble is significant both in its physicality and in common sayings in the English language.

Physically, any sphere implies motion; it has no single base. A marble is a wonderful example of what we do as sculptors: consider material in space, responding to gravity. Within art disciplines, Sculpture is the place where gravity is considered most.

In common sayings, a marble holds so much. Think about common English-language figures of speech that have to do with marbles. For example, marbles have to do with sanity: “losing your marbles,” or betting for everything, “for all the marbles;” or with speech: having a “mouthful of marbles.”

Who is said to be sane, who has “lost their marbles”? Who has “all the marbles” to risk playing with and losing? Who is understandable or does not have a “mouthful of marbles”?

Larger spheres and balls hint at these common sayings, without being so direct.

fig. 1-5 The Meeting (detail).

fig. 1-6 The Meeting, 2018–2020, mycelium, boardroom office table and chairs, walnut, nylon, poplar, acrylic, hardware, performance, dimensions variable. Installation at The Galleries At Moore. Photo by Joseph Hu.

fig. 1-7 The Meeting (office view), 2019, mycelium, boardroom office table and chairs, walnut, nylon, poplar, acrylic, hardware, performance, dimensions variable. Installation in The Vera List Center for Art and Politics at the New School. Photo by Levi Mandel.

fig. 1-8 Modular Daybed for Touching Art, 2020, steel, aluminum, walnut, popular, acrylic, newspaper pulp, mycelium, organic cotton, kapock, hardware, 80 x 15 x 38 inches, dimensions variable with adjustable components. Installation at Rose Art Museum. Special thanks to the University Ombuds, Ecovative, DIY Natural Bedding, Juju and Jake, and Ian Whittemore for help creating this project. Images: Courtesy of the artist. Photo by Mel Taing.

fig. 1-9 Still from The Meeting Game, single-channel video loop, produced in collaboration with Alex Mallis and Meerkat Media, 2019.

fig. 1-10 Still from The Meeting Game, single-channel video loop, produced in collaboration with Alex Mallis and Meerkat Media, 2019.

fig. 1-11 The Meeting (gallery view), 2018–2019, mycelium, walnut, nylon, glass, hardware, performance, dimensions variable. Photo by Daniel Chou.

fig. 1-12 Caroline Woolard, Untitled (Objects for Facilitation), 2018. Video still by Herman Jean-Noel.