2023, 16” x 20”
Organic cotton and hemp dyed with maddar, eucalyptus, indigo and marigolds, potato dextrose agar, inoculated with P. ostreatus while also growing Trichoderma sp. and A. niger, and embroidered with text.
Selected text from “Transform”, by Beata Tsosie-Peña, in Restor(y)ing Soil: Facilitating Succession Post-wildfires.
The text reads:
… and this warming is a warning to your legalities. Extinction does not recognized self-appointed dominance. And your laws will never be of these lands. This place, your systems of power over lives will not continue are not a part of forever, not a part of now.
and i think about how fire is transformational, can speed change destroy indiscriminately, like a storm, or slower and controlled - sprouting new growth. Self resurrection forests of symbiotic revolutionary collapse forcing nurturing collaboration. There are places where heat turns mountains to glass, there are places where wildflowers and dormant diversity take root…
Project in collaboration with Saša Spačal
Radiotrophic fungi are fungi capable of metabolizing ionized radiation in a process akin to photosynthesis. Rather than converting sunlight into energy, radiotrophic fungi can convert gamma radiation into a useable food source. The Radiotrophic Fungarium serves as a book of care linking stories from the past into networks for dire futures. Imagine if these fungi could form shields against radiation, growing into coats, face masks, blankets, scarfs and alike to provide protection for those who have been sacrificed by the patriarchal capitalist system and nuclear colonialism? Climate change and nuclear threat are imminent and a past of radioactive harm has since been detonated. What is there to learn and how can we proceed?
Scientific support and consulting:
Dr. Nina Gunde-Cimerman, dr. Polona Zalar, Barbara Kastelic-Bokal (University of Ljubljana, Biotechnical Faculty; Ljubljana)
Ana Gubenšek, mag. mikrobiol. (Center odličnosti InnoRenew CoE, Izola)
With the help of: students of Microbiology (University of Ljubljana, Biotechnical Faculty), within the Mycology elective course
Video environments, animation: Matea Friend
Video research, materials, storyboard: Kaitlin Bryson
Video storyboard, animation, montage: Saša Spačal
Sound: Saša Spačal
Concrete plates: Andrej Škufca, Neja Zorzut, Igor Trunk
Folding panel plans: Lovrenc Košenina
Folding panels construction: Jože Zajc
Production: Uroš Veber, Tjaša Pogačar, Projekt Atol Institute
Exhibition photos: Marijo Zupanov
With support by: The Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia & the City of Ljubljana
Collaboration between Kaitlin Bryson and Matea Friend with original score by Emigdio Turner
video installation, sound 9’ x 6’
We Have Been Dead to the World That is Alive, is a collaborative, intermedia artwork that is confrontational in its acknowledgement of humans’ responsibility for the climate crisis, driven and perpetuated by toxic myths of human exceptionalism and solipsism. The artwork provokes a reckoning with ourselves; to challenge predictable apathy, and instead, cultivate collective care. Working with a combination of found, manipulated, original video and animated content, the visuals provide a solemn lens into a nonlinear history of “isolated” events of extraction, deforestation, resource depletion, erosion, and nuclear violence. Imbricated with ominous visuals of the repercussions of these events – made manifest in the climate crisis – the artwork condenses and distorts time providing insight into the grounding truth that nothing is isolated. We are here together, and we are made of each other; human and more-than human.
Selected text from “A Burning Testament” by Terry Tempest-Williams and “Instructions for Compost” by Bryson and the Submergence Collective run as undercurrents throughout the video connecting the viewer to the reality of now. The text calls out the faults of our species and calls for seeing ourselves interwoven within and accountable to the living world.
Note* text is written from white, western/ized subject positions.
Organic cotton and hemp dyed with marigolds, madder, alkanet, logwood, lac, indigo, and pomegranates. Potato dextrose agar, coffee grounds, nutritional yeast, inoculated with pleurotus ostreatus and cladosporium cladosporioides fungal species, and embroidered text.
may we decompose violence in ourselves before we ask it of the world, is an artwork that gestures towards the bio/myco-remediation of toxic dust settled within the sediment of the Great Salt Lake. This artwork offers a reminder that toxic transformation is indeed possible, by emphasizing the potentials of transdisciplinary collaboration with multi-species as well as through science, art, and healing. However, the work acknowledges that before we (humans) lean into any multi-species remediation, we must first repair/decompose/make-into-nutrient the root causes of the issues: greed, human solipsism, and pervading myths of the “individual”. If we do not activate this work in parallel to bioremediation, we will only continue to feed the forces of violence.
Bryson’s seven-foot long, naturally dyed, quilted textile depicts the light signature of arsenic, one of the harmful heavy metals found in the soil of the Great Salt Lake. A light signature is the unique and specific frequency of light emitted or absorbed by an element when heated, which is illustrated by bands of colors visible across the spectrum of light. The quilted textile is inoculated with two species of fungi (Pleurotus ostreatus and Cladosporium cladosporioides) both capable of facilitating transformation/sequestration of arsenic into their biomass when combined with native plants in succession-driven bioremediation. This means that bioremediation is not done in singularity, no single species is ever taking the burden, rather it is always treated as a community effort sharing and distributing resources. As the quilt ages and the representation of arsenic’s light signature is visually altered by the growth/consumption of the fungi, making visible a contemporary alchemical ritual of transformation and healing.
The words embroidered onto the textiles are prayers meant to feed the fungi as they consume the textile in preparation for their work ahead. The words are supplemental nutrients offered to strengthen them and to acknowledge what we have done. These words come from the powerful voice of Brontë Velez, created as mantra to open space for restorative environmental and social justice-oriented actions. Within our practices of change and reparation, may we always offer prayers as starting point and nutrients to orient our work.
This work is created through the many hands of collaboration. Thank you to Brontë Velez for offering their words as food. Thank you to Kalyn Mae Finnell for your help making a rainbow through the biochemistry of natural dyes. Thank you to Danielle Stevenson whose scientific research on bioremediation and ecotoxicology have (informed this work) and paved the way for accessible, contemporary land applications of bioremediation. And thank you to the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art and Jared Steffensen for creating the space for this work and this important and timely exhibition.
2023
16” x 22” & 18” x 23” Buried textile: organic cotton, hemp and linen, dyed with madder, indigo, cochineal, marigolds, embroidered with organic cotton thread. Audio: interview with Marla Sorrell, biosonified data
I’ve Been Here so Long, I Can Read the Sky is a sample of a larger in-process community project by Bryson entitled Bellow Forth. You can read more about the project here.
In collaboration with the amazing, Saša Spačal and written for Antennae Magazine: Microbial Ecologies Autumn 2022 Edition.
Shiro’s Carrier Bag is a speculative fiction story following the multispecies journey of Shiro - a hybrid creature, part-human, part-fungi - who is called to the Underworld by chthonic forces. Set in the timespace of her late body’s decomposition in a beech forest, Shiro’s memories and stories are dispersed into networks and woven into new meanings through collaboration and interactions. The story is composed of co-authored fungal ontologies, Facilitated by MycoMythologies: Storytelling Circle workshops. In these workshops, participants are guided to create their own speculative stories, based off of embodied mycological practices creating caring and inclusive storytelling practices for multispecies survival.
FULL TEXT: can be viewed by clicking any image, or from downloading the free PDF
Acknowledgements
The short stories included in this narrative were guided into existence through MycoMythologies: Storytelling Circle workshops facilitated by Kaitlin Bryson and Saša Spačal. These gatherings employed the following participatory methodologies: Spores and Networks Guided Meditation, Mycelial Storytelling Objects, How to be a Mushroom Hunter Soundwalk, Carrier Bag Weaving Tutorial and Mycelial Map-Making.
Shiro’s Carrier Bag Storytelling Circle: Kaitlin Bryson, Saša Spačal, Vanya Ward-Lambrecht, Katja Striedelmeyer, Hanna Paniutsich.
Passing on and Passing Away: Katja Striedelmeyer
Traveler’s Story: Vanya Ward-Lambrecht
Belarusian Mushroom Picker: Hanna Paniutsich
Shiro’s Carrier Bag Images by Kaitlin Bryson, Saša Spačal, Vanya Ward-Lambrecht, Hanna Paniutsich, Katja Striedelmeyer were transformed in post-production by Saša Spačal.
Thank you to editors Ken Rinaldo and Giovanni Aloi and to all the other contributors of Autumn 2022 edition.
MycoMythologies: Storytelling Circle would not have been possible without the support and generosity of Dr. Victoria Vesna, UCLA Art|Sci Center, KID KIbla and HfK Bremen.
The MycoMythologies series expresses deep admiration for the wisdom, work, and legacies of Lion’s Mane Hericium erinaceus, Oyster mushroom Pleurotus ostreatus, Octavia E. Butler, and Ursula K. Le Guin.
This durational performance focuses on the human body’s role in the affirmation of life through tending to microbial processes facilitating bioremediation. Each gesture enfolds beneficial microbial species into the depleted soil. For the performance, Bryson grew a pair of fungal shoes made from Reishi mycelium. Bryson also wears a garment constructed of many strands of white cotton rope to symbolize the embodiment of a mycelial network.
Bryson creates an entangled pathway with a shovel, digging into the compacted glass and polluted soil - which extends out from the artwork “Decay is the Beginning”. Native, cultivated fungi were added, along with compost to foster the living systems already on site. The performance culminated with the burial of the artwork “Decay is the Beginning” which holds two of the most critical fungal species for carbon storage and sequestration.
Location: Albuquerque Glass Graveyard, New Mexico
40’ x 18’ x 6’
weaving, projection, performance
This is a large-scale weaving and collaborative performance which concurrently balances acts of creation with acts of destruction through acts of repair. A constant cycle of making and un-making. The large-scale woven installation simultaneously represents a mycelial network and quantum notions of time. Together, the mycelial weavers build and make the piece into existence. At the opening, audience members were encouraged to pick up balls of rope and weave and create messages.
Projected onto the weaving is an animation made through the AI learning system style GAN. The images depicted are burning suns, photographs taken of red suns during wildfire. The AI network learns the images through an adversarial network then recreates its own version of the image.
“Many Hands” is a multifaceted project led by Tewa Women United’s (Environmental Health and Justice Program), Beata Tsosie-Peña, Kaitlin Bryson and Cheyenne Antonio. Tewa Women United (TWU) is a non-profit, Indigenous led organization based in Tewa Ancestral Homelands (Española, New Mexico). “Tewa Women United envisions movement(s) rooted in P’in Haa (Breath of Heart/Life) and P’in Nall (Touching Heart and Spirit) that nurture and celebrate the collective power of beloved families, communities, and Nung Ochuu Quiyo (Earth Mother).”
“Many Hands” is working towards awareness and remediation of a site 7.5 miles southwest of Counselor Chapter House that was polluted in 2019 by a fracking flowback spill. This incident, NMOCD Incident # NCS1905249442, released 1,400 barrels of fracking flowback fluid and over 300 barrels of crude oil into an ephemeral stream the Escavada Wash, which is a tributary of the Chaco Wash in Chaco Canyon.
Through hosting free community workshops and lectures about myco and bioremediation, this project hopes to inform Native residents of the potentials of at-home remediation strategies and foster empowerment through providing resources and information. The workshops led by Bryson and Tsosie-Peña taught mushroom cultivation through cultivating “hands” - innoculating medical gloves with substrate and P. ostreatus spawn. Overall, the project facilitates outreach and education through free workshops and lectures, printed literature translated into Navajo, bio/mycoremdiation installation(s), and activism for policy reformation surrounding the oil and gas industry on Native Land.
In November, the project team and volunteers installed a myco and bioremediation installation at the site using fungi, cottonwoods, plants, native seeds, compost, and naturally constructed wattles. The “Many Hands” that were grown all summer in various workshops around Diné Tah and the eastern United States came together in the naturally constructed wattles to be used as a water filtration system. Another wattle was constructed with straw and inoculated with P. ostreatus spawn.
The final project goal revolves around gathering insight from Indigenous community members who have been impacted by environmental injustices (especially relating to fracking/oil and gas) about what they feel would be an important protocol for responsible parties to follow for any future spills or contamination as there is currently not an action plan in-place nor regulated for communicating with residents about any environmental emergencies. To address this issue, the project team are working with community members to line out an Indigenous-led protocol and then to advocate that the US EPA and the Navajo Nation EPA regulate and follow this protocol to help protect residents.
The team will be working on a free publication (zine) outlining the project, all educational components and the protocol. This zine will be handed out across Diné Tah.
This work, “what an elementary thing it is to worship someone in singularity” is part of Lichenizing, a collective strategy created by the Submergence Collective that uses the model of lichen-lifestyles to better approach how we live, learn and work with each other. Lichen’s complex symbiosis defies and complicates the scientific taxonomic system, and the other predictable constructed categories we humans deploy for biology, gender, politics, economics, society, pedagogy, etc, to distinguish, compartmentalize, judge, and discriminate the like-us and the not-like-us. Agitating the boundaries of individual and multiple, sexual and asexual, life and death, they radically and irreparably reshape our ideas of community and cooperation. Lichenized entities are enmeshed with(in) each other: living-with, making-with, and dying-with. To transcend myopic human-centric frameworks that inevitably retrench inequalities and ignore our own animality, we need a habit change for thinking things differently, for dreaming about the not-yet. Lichen offers a framework for noticing how we are enmeshed in the creative impulses of others—collaborating, agitating, thriving, decaying.
This audiovisual piece imbricates and interweaves a prose-poem collaboratively created using the prompt of “lichen”, field-recordings of lichen spaces and composed sounds. The visual component entrances viewers into lichen morphology created with a generative AI network. The AI is given a dataset of images and learns how to differentiate between “like” and “unlike”, creating entirely new images based off of its findings. This process trains the AI to “see” lichen, much like we hope to do for our human viewers.
This project is constantly evolving, made by the Submergence Collective in humble collaboration with: Matea Friend (Style GAN and visual assistance) and Diego Gaeta (sound composition)
Decay is the beginning.
It is the composition of transformation.
It is necessary for survival.
Decay grows from the physical acknowledgement of the history of its parts through their un-making.
Fertility is the result of the activities of decay.
Decay is the process of erosion. Erosion reveals sedimented histories - histories of settlement - of conquest and oppression of violence on bodies, violence on land. Eroding rock breaks open language and belief systems set in stone.
Decay and erosion are parables of entropy.
The process of entropy quantifies.
(words by kaitlin bryson)
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This work was made in response to the divisive and violent politics of 2020; the continuing violence suffered by people of color perpetrated by the police, the US government and white supremacists. The title of the work comes from Octavia Butler in “The Parable of the Sower” admonishing that we must let civilization collapse when change is essential. Working with the metaphor and material of fungi, the words (above) along with the names of those who have suffered homicide by the police (from 2014-2020) are consumed in total by the fungi living inside. These words and these names are prayers - fertility in action. They are prayers and sustenance for a future worth living in. Prayers for the decay of white supremacy. Prayers that the United States might change. Prayers that there might be justice in a future yet-unknown.
This work was buried at the Los Angeles Police Academy serving as a symbolic gesture for systemic remediation to take place at the very institution of policing. While the burial performance was going on, gun training was happening at the academy. Echos of bullets being fired played in the background. We offered prayers for change.
14” x 13” X 6” - Naturally-dyed fibers, embroidery, Pleurotous ostreatus mycelium.
A collaboration between Kaitlin Bryson and Matea Friend with sound by Ian Nelson
18’ x 5’ x 13’ site-specific installation and weaving made out of organic cotton rope, video installation projection mapped onto woven sculpture @ UCLA Botanical Garden.
Mycorrhizal networks are expansive fungal systems that interconnected multiple species of plants together via plant root systems in the soil. These organisms tap into the plant’s root and work symbiotically with their hosts immobilizing minerals and nutrients that are otherwise unavailable, in exchange for excess carbon that the plant has derived through photosynthesis. Over 95% of the Earth’s plants rely on these collaborations.
This symbiosis is also a form of interspecies communication. The plants and fungi are electrochemically communicating through the medium of the mycorrhizal network. The complex woven network behaves like a neural network, transmitting signals through electrical pulses as well as translating vital information throughout the ecosystem.
Trans(re)lations is an artwork that makes the invisible visible, by scaling up and illuminating these unseen forces and communicative potentials. We know so little of the world below our feet. By creating an above-ground mycorrhizal network, layered with projected imagery and electrical signals, this work begins to break down the communication barrier between humans and the more-than-human world. Nestled in the urban sprawl of Los Angeles, The UCLA Botanical Garden was home to this site-specific installation to imagine and excite the abounding electro-chemical communications that are happening all around us.
32” x 13” x 5”
Organic and naturally dyed fiber, embroidery, organic cotton rope, locally farmed straw hulls, oyster mushroom spawn
This artwork re-circulates materials, biotic and abiotic, to articulate the abounding exchanges happening though (and between) the living and the dying. Spent agricultural wastes inoculated with fungi are wrapped together in the quilted and embroidered death shroud. Throughout history in many cultures death shrouds have been meticulously made by artisans to support and protect the deceased as they transition to the next life. These incredible tapestries were not meant for the living, rather they were meant to be given to the dead as a shield. On this death shroud, two wands of Yarrow are held in the hands, meant to symbolize strength and protection. Embroidered mycelium begins to grow at the third eye, and cotton rope contains and holds the figure intact. This fiber shroud is at once a symbol and a habitat for the organisms inside who feed off decaying matter. The shroud will eventually be consumed by the oyster mycelium and we will no longer be able to make out the visual, human-made marks.
After this work grew and fruited for six months, it was buried in Los Angeles, California. Offering its transformative and restorative materials and processes to the polluted landscape.
These photos show various stages of the artwork throughout the six month period, from the fabrication of the fiber shroud, to its myceliation , fruiting, and eventual burial.
Thank you to Re-Fest 2021, Culture Hub LA and the UCLA Art|Sci Center
Meliniomyces bicolor, Cenococcum geophilum, Pleurotus ostreatus, Navajo churro wool, lightbox
26” x 15.5”
This weaving is inoculated with melanized fungi - two species that produce the pigment of melanin in their mycelium thereby growing brown or black threads of mycelium. Species of melanized fungi are highly specialized yet often ubiquitous within our environment. Some species of melanized fungi are radiotrophic, meaning they are able to chemically synthesize radiation (gamma and beta) in their bodies and transform it into energy. Other species, like the ones grown on this weaving are essential in our environment as they are some of the leading carbon storage organisms living in the soil. Due to their production of melanin, their mycelium decay at a much slower rate. Therefore when they die they hold the carbon stored in their bodies for long periods of time.
The (once) white weaving was supplemented with Potato Dextrose Agar and Potassium Chloride to feed the melanized fungi. The melanized fungi grow slowly over the weaving.
This project was supported by and made in collaboration with Dr. Katilyn V. Beidler - who generously donated cultures of melanized fungi, as well as assisted with the application of the fungi onto the woven structure.
12 ‘ x 20 “ fibers naturally dyed with ochre, piñon pitch, madder, poke berry, indigo, osage, marigolds, cosmos, and wolf lichen. Inoculated with Trametes versicolor, Pleurotus ostreatus, Trichoderma sp. Penicillium sp.
“The Alchemy of Arsenic” is a death shroud made for the soil, to facilitate life and the transformation of arsenic contamination. A 12-foot naturally-dyed weaving depicts the light signature of arsenic. A light signature is the unique and specific frequency of light emitted or absorbed by an element when heated. The weaving is broken up into three sections and installed in the arsenic-contaminated bed. Each section is inoculated with a remediative-species of fungi (cultivated on-site) then installed over the choice substrate for those species. As the weaving decomposes, and the light of arsenic is transformed by the fungi, the soil below the weaving will also be transformed embodying a contemporary alchemical ritual of arsenic transformation.
This work is a site-specific piece made for the soil of Oak Spring Garden Foundation, specifically on the northern edge of the walled garden. Before the site’s transformation into a Biocultural Conservation Farm, in 2018, the walled garden was home to cut flowers and espalier fruit trees. During this time, the garden was treated with pesticides that contained arsenic compounds, which has left the long northern edge of the walled garden with arsenic contaminated soil.
Arsenic is a complex element with many histories and associated mythologies. In its inorganic form, Arsenic is highly toxic metalloid and has been used by humans as a poison for pests, as well as for weapons. Long term arsenic exposure can cause cancers, skin diseases and cardiovascular diseases. In ancient alchemy, arsenic was an important element that was used to induce trance-like states for enlightenment and healing. Its three allotropes, metallic gray, yellow and black as associated with death and transformation.
MycoMythologies: Infrastructures for Each Other summons human, mycelial and computer-vision-agencies to join together in a performance of entanglement, providing understanding that the practices of human and other-than-human infrastructures are made with and informed by one another. Working with the AI networks of styleGAN, trained on datasets of human faces, mycelium, roots, rivers, pipelines, roadways and extraction facilities, infrastructures in the latent space are generated to enfold and erode into each other. Becoming infrastructures for each other.
The video essay is an attempt at polyphonic montage that allows the digital image to be formed with agency of multiple human and non-human forces while revealing its constitutive parts - the pixels. The infrastructure that enables humans to generate and see digital images is exposed with pixel sorting flow , hinting at the fact that digital images are one of the tools that enables human beings to see beyond our species, thus its production should be questioned constantly.
Artists: Saša Spačal, Kaitlin Bryson; StyleGAN: Kaitlin Bryson, Matea Friend; Database Building: Kaitlin Bryson, Saša Spačal; Montage: Saša Spačal; Sound: Saša Spačal, Pim Boreel
A holy being who is not singular articulates pathways of interspecies connections through mycelium, thread, fabric and human form. In this work singular units exist in three, individual spaces. A woven, cotton network hangs on the wall; a sheet of paper grown from Ganoderma lucidium mycelium hangs adjacent; and the floor contains a biome with Ganoderma lucidium mycelium woven into cotton rope with a bowl of water underneath. This biome suggests a life-support system, with the two networks joining together to create an organ. In an upcoming performance these seemingly singular units will be activated by a human figure, expanding the mycelial organ outward and connecting the larger space to the microscopic, interwoven network of hyphae. This work reminds us that the holiness of all beings, human and more-than-human, is made through the composition of many species, that the “one” is never truly singular.
As the work lives in the gallery, Reishi mushrooms sprout and bear spores.
All photos courtesy of The Nook Gallery
MycoMythologies: Storytelling Circle
Off_/On_line performative workshop
Saša Spačal, Kaitlin Bryson
MycoMythologies: Storytelling Circle is an on/off_line performative workshop that evokes and employs the mycelial mind of the attendants through nodes of knowledge gathering practices and embodied mycology. Participants create their own mycomythological, speculative stories to share with one another and donate to the Spawn database. Participants will learn about World Networks Entanglement also known as planetary infrastructures through the various portions of the performative workshop: How to be a Mushroom Hunter soundwalk, Spores and Networks guided meditation, Mycelial Storytelling Objects, Carrier Bag Weaving tutorial and Mycelial Map-Making … Each portion of the workshop is a node in the mycelial web: networking, expedition, gathering story spores, making maps, storytelling and spawn.
Carrier Bag Weaving tutorial
Performer: Kaitlin Bryson
Video: Matea Friend
How to be a Mushroom Hunter soundwalk
Voice: Whitney Myer
Sound: Saša Spačal, Pim Boreal
Special thanks: Victoria Vesna, Irena Borić
Performed workshops:
KID KIBLA, Maribor, Slovenia [March - April, 2021]
UCLA ArtSci Center, Department of Design Media Arts, Los Angeles, United States [April, 2021]
KID Kibla
2021
Naturally dyed fiber with rabbit brush and indigo, at least 6 species of ascomycetes
(dimensions: 12” x 8”)
This piece began as a prototype for remediation pillows. Organic linen was naturally dyed, quilted, embroidered and sewn, then filled with hardwood sawdust and Pleurotus ostreatus mycelium. The work was set inside a humid chamber. After two days, mycelium began developing on the surface, the development of mycelium never stopped – however the growing mycelium was apparently not the targeted Pleurotus. Over the course of three months, up to six different species of ascomycetes grew and developed. Known genera: Trichoderma sp., Aspergillus sp., Penicillium sp., Neurospora crassa.
Starting as a test, and technically a complete failure, “Numinous Decay” became one of my greatest teachers. In this piece the work itself became “contaminated” with other species of fungi, so much so that the targeted species of Pleurotus ostreatus was unable to grow. These living materials are multi-species interactions that live lives and ultimately, I am not in control. The loss of my own control with this work was a humbling parable about my role as a human and as a creator. I learned that I must be open to whatever happens, understanding the implications of my own actions, as I am creating habitats that are ripe for any microbial life to want to live and die in. When I fail at sterility, multitudes abound.
(2018)
Linen and raw silk dyed with madder root, indigo, sandalwood, rabbit brush, and cochineal, micaceous clay base, glass dome, elm stump
This remediation pillow was made in collaboration with TWU and Trametes versicolor and given to the soil at the Farmer’s Market site in Española, NM. Soil tests taken from this vital community site have been found to contain high amounts of RDX (research department explosive). This powder has landed at the site from routine weapon detonation tests done by Los Alamos National Laboratory throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. To this day, this explosive continues to permeate the soil and accumulate in the food (plant tissues) that grow on-site.
The imagery on the quilt was developed through conversations with TWU. It was the wish of the community that the Corn Mother would be honored, as well as the Four Directions. Furthermore, the chemical composition of RDX is embroidered, but can be seen going through a break-down being transformed into nitrogen. On May 7, 2018 this pillow was given to this site in a community performance.
Target contaminant: Cyclo-1,3,4-trimethylene-2,4,6-trinitramine, more commonly known as RDX (research department explosive). A chemical with widespread application in munitions. It is used as a component in propellants, detonators, bombs, grenades and a wide variety of other military ordinances.
Impacts: Acute health effects of RDX involve the central nervous system (CNS), gastro-intestinal system (GI), and adrenal system. Acute effects include hyperirritability, nausea, vomiting, generalized seizures, and prolonged amnesia.
Naturally dyed fiber with rabbit brush, cotton rope, New Mexico native wildflower seeds, soil, mycorrhizal fungi spores
(dimensions variable)
A seed is a container of pure potential. Though inanimate in its sleepy seed state, its fullest and most realized state is as an animate being in the world. It takes a radical moment for the seed to make its transformation into the living realm, especially in the desert. The seed knows when the conditions are right, and when that time comes it alchemically transforms its identity. The seed breaks open and goes through a tremendous morphological shift, and at this time the seed is no longer a seed. It threshes off its hull and is born into a radicle – the plant embryo. It begins to simultaneously grow upward and downward, reaching both towards the light and towards the darkness.
“Radicle” is made to place viewers underground, underneath the mycorrhizal network made of rope where a multiplicity of “seeds” wait for the right moment. Each hanging pod represents a sleeping seed, and is filled with high desert native wildflowers and soil. The outside of the pods are dyed with rabbit brush harvested on site. Viewers were invited to cut or untie a pod from the woven network to take home and collaborate, as a reminder that we are all a part of the ecosystem. The pod contained all of the nutrients and content needed in order to grow – but those contents needed to be spread and gently tended.
30’ x 15’
Indigo-dyed cotton, fans, 84 LED displays
Rise and Fall is a work about the embodiment of letting go and moving through – reminding us to be like water. Trapped bodies float through a body of water, equally contained within the fluid limits and unable to escape the loop, despite their attempts. Similarly, many of us experienced these feelings submerged in the chaos and hardships of 2020. At the end of the year, with all that had passed, we were eroded and changed. There is power in the embodiment of erosion and there is power in surrendering to the undulations of our earthly experiences. Bringing the human into the digital realm through indigo-dyed fabric, fans and 84 LED displays this piece illuminates the mesmerizing tranquility of releasing to those forces that are greater than us.
Collaborators:
Media Artists: Nate Mohler and Matea Friend
Fabricators: David Friend and Matea Friend
Textile Artists: Kaitlin Bryson and David Friend
Sound Design: Kain Sannicks
(Click on the first image or HERE to see the project catalog and read more about the project and collaborators)
Gently Radical Changing (2018) was an expansive and collaborative project between Kaitlin Bryson, Tewa Women United, and artists and activists in New Mexico. This project was focused on spreading awareness about and helping remediate toxic lands and histories stemming from the development of the Atomic Bomb at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) through interactive artwork and lectures, workshops and demonstrations.
The project amounted in a public exhibition at Sanitary Tortilla Factory in Albuquerque, NM, two public burial performances and mycoremediation installations in Española, NM, a community workshop about DIY mushroom cultivation and remediation strategies, and eventually the project led to a public hearing and testimony at LANL against the current remediation strategies by LANL. The images in this gallery demonstrate the scope of the project.
(2018)
Collaboration with artists, Rachel Zollinger and Jessica Zeglin
paint made from soil collected from acequia and surrounding fields, video compilation
Terra Macrobiota illuminated the tiny, vital creatures that terraform and inform the world around us, but especially in the acequias, ponds, and water systems. Water and soil samples were collected from these places to look at, observe, and identify the microbiota. These samples also became our materials as we used what was collected to paint a mural composed of our microscopy imagery. Oxygen bubbles became a pattern, and stencils of the microorganisms populated this pattern.
Once the sun set, a video taken from our microscopy sessions turned the micro into macro, creating a scale shift and allowing visitors to observe the stenciled organisms and their movements and interactions. For the exhibition, several microscopes were set up alongside the mural with samples so viewers could peak into this world. The microbiota in the acequia system are vital, but completely overlooked, contributors to the health of the ecology and high-desert farming systems.
October 24, 2016
"Today I sat on the banks of the Rio Grande and offered my hand to the Rio. With needles collected from a nearby Prickly Pear Cactus, I tattooed the line of the river into and around the side of my hand. This gesture is a form of acknowledgement; the Rio is now embedded into my lifelines, just as I am woven into its systems.
As we have made our way down the Rio Grande learning and thinking about water rights, it has become viscerally clear that the Rio is a living being and is the tie that binds it all together. It is a living link: a blood line that runs through the land, supporting and nourishing each aspect of life in the Southwest. It connects all of the varying strata – the lives of humans and nonhumans, culture, spirituality, history, and ecology – into a dynamic and ever-changing system.
I see the completed line on my hand only as the beginning of this piece. It is a mark that will most certainly change, just as the Rio itself does. I will document and record the shifts, erosion, and changes that this line undergoes as I continue to work for//with//within this watershed and bioregion."
- Kaitlin Bryson
Hand-made paper from cottonwood seed pods, native grassland seeds, naturally-dyed fibers, soil collected from the riverbed, ink made from black walnut and cottonwood leaves, grow lights, pine, soil
(dimensions variable)
The current stand of the most prolific cottonwood trees in the Middle Rio Grande Bosque are nearing the end of their lives. Cottonwoods grow when flooding occurs along the riparian zone, allowing for successful germination of seeds. With the rise of climate change and diversions upstream, there has not been a successful year of natural propagation since 1941. The decline of cottonwoods along the Rio Grande will change the entire ecosystem and habitat resulting in species migration and loss. The structure of the Bosque will take on a new composition, increasing aridity and exposure, advancing the desertification of the Southwestern ecology.
The mural was painted with soil collected from the riverbed, black walnut ink, and ink made from cottonwood chlorophyll. The mural depicts the topography of the Rio Grande floodplain, with the human built river diversion infrastructure overlaid, whose lines show a stark contrast to the river’s natural movement. Cottonwood seedlings are painted in a line at the height that flooding needs to occur in order for the seeds to germinate. Without the river’s natural flooding this vital species is dying out. The ink made from chlorophyll decays with light exposure and as the exhibition continues the painted seedlings fade.
Simultaneously, paper made from cottonwood seed pods and embedded with native plains seeds grows over a labyrinth of native animal tracks; their literal impacts pressed into the soil. This speaks to the loss of cottonwoods even further. If their canopy disappears the entire ecosystem will change and habitats for those animals will be lost.
(2018)
Durational performance with artist, Eric-Paul Riege, and community members
In this performance, Bryson and Riege take on roles of custodial spiders. Hybrid, radio-active, weaver-beings, cleaning toxicity and using the “toxic” materials to warp a loom in order to weave a new story. Together they remove “contaminated” cotton rope from an oil barrel which contained 50 gallons of indigo dye.
Indigo is chosen to represent the contamination for a few reasons. First, it is a safe material that has a profound visual impact, turning the skin blue and filling the gallery with a strong scent. Secondly, indigo reacts through oxidation and oxidation is a key (but contradictory) process within the exhibition, Gently Radical Changing. . The weaving was completed in a community effort after the initial performance. For one week, a schedule was posted, and community members were invited to the gallery to come share in the process.
Organic linen and raw silk naturally dyed with indigo, madder, anatto, cochineal, rabbit brush, Pleurotus ostreatus
(dimensions variable)
Para la Madre was made for Los Ranchos de Guapamacátaro in Michoacán, Mexico in collaboration with Pleurotus ostreatus. This remediation pillow was installed in a small stream that showed high nitrate concentrations and contained E. coli and viral diseases. Food harvested near the stream produced a viral infection that effected the entire community. The remediation pillow, installed on a floating raft in the stream, acts as a water filter. P. ostreatus mycelium has been highly studied for the sequestration of nitrates, and E. coli. The imagery on the pillow pays honors to maize depicting a tall and healthy stalk and a root system covered in embroidered, mycorrhizal fungi. This piece is a prayer, asking for healthy crops through healthy water and soil. It was dedicated to the community, and to the earth mother. Together in a community performance, this piece was carried to the stream and installed.
Bamboo, twine, clay, soil, Pleurotus ostreatus mycelium, Canna indica, and Typha sp.
(dimensions variable)
Produced by the Submergence Collective. Website for the project/collective is currently under construction.
As part of the Danda Ecosystem Monitoring Program, this work was created for the ecology and students of Pratiman-Neema Memorial Foundation in Siddathanagar, Nepal.
The floating wetland is a woven, bamboo raft populated with emergent wetland plants in mycelium containers and planting medium. The wetland was placed in the west drainage channel that drains into the Danda River and is composed of urban runoff from Siddathanagar. Because Siddharthangar is an expanding urban center and an agricultural town, the drainage is filled with harmful contaminants including industrial waste, nitrates, E. coli, sediment solids, and heavy metals. Canna lily (Canna indica) and cattail (Typha sp.) are two plants that have been researched and used for the effective remediation/sequestration of heavy metals. Furthermore, oyster mushroom (Pleurotus ostreatus) mycelium was used to additionally support in remediation against nitrates and E.Coli.
The effectiveness of the floating wetland is also due in large part of the underwater biofilm that are created by the root system of the plants. As the roots grow into the water, they create habitat for bacteria and microorganisms known as a biofilm. The biofilm collectively acts as the primary mechanism for contamination removal. As water passes through the biofilm, microbes and bacteria catch and absorb the contaminants. Within this process, organic sediments are broken down and converted into gas through volatilization. Furthermore, the root system of the plants uptake these materials and through sorption and sequestration the materials are transferred to the biomass of the plant. It is critical that the bamboo raft float on the surface of the water so that the leaves of the plants continue to photosynthesize, yet the roots of the plants are submerged.
After the wetland was installed, it was the wish of the college to put a barrier around it so animals would stay out. Barbed wire and bamboo were installed. Six weeks later, a second floating wetland was installed by the community and modeled after ours. The floating wetland was made with bamboo, a local and renewable resource and woven with twine. The ellipse/egg-like shape of the floating wetland was intended to represent a seed which we see as a container of potential as well as an incubatory space where transformation happens. We see the floating wetland sculpture as a representation of potential and transformation. The overall purpose of the floating wetland was to conduct water quality research upstream and downstream from the wetland.
(2018)
Organic linen and raw silk naturally dyed with indigo, madder, anatto, cochineal, rabbit brush, Pleurotus ostreatus.
(dimensions variable)
This work translates to “Remembering Old Futures” and was made for Los Ranchos de Guapamacátaro in Michoacán, Mexico in collaboration with Pleurotus ostreatus. This work was installed at the base of an inefficient septic tank which was leaking harmful toxins into the ground and nearby field. It was the dream of the community to populate the field with sheep, an old and forgotten tradition in the village. As the pressures of economy through commercial cattle farming increased in the area, the tradition of grazing sheep had been lost. The increase of monoculture and cattle farming have turned many fields in the village fallow. The imagery on the remediation pillow portrays a field of sheep. In this image, the ground is healthy, and the soil ecology has been restored. In a community performance, this piece was carried to the septic tank site and installed on location with wishes of abundance spoken in both English and Spanish.
Watervapor, glass beakers, Usnea essence for: depression, apnea, inability to speak; and Birch polypore essence for: immunity, vitality, strength and resistance; San Juan remedy: for deep physical pain that comes from polluted waters; Cedar remedy: hope embodied, an essence of transformation
The Remedy Clouds were offerings made to the sky, precipitated from intentions of healing damaged lands, psyches, and bodies. This collaborative work between Ruth Le Gear and Kaitlin Bryson began in New Mexico and was released in Ireland where we joined on residency.
Each micro-cloud offered a healing gesture through medicinal energy. The clouds were created in glass bottles with water vapor that contained lichen and mushroom essences, as well as homeopathic remedies. Bryson prepared the essences, and Le Gear made the remedies through her traditional processes. Inside the glass bottles, the clouds were created by making high-and-low pressure systems. Once the clouds accumulated inside, we released them into the atmosphere at sites of trauma.
Both Le Gear and I explore methodologies for healing damaged places, and after considering many ways to combine our practices and geographic differences, we landed in the sky. It also helped that we were working in Ireland, in January, and so we were submerged in a cloud most of the time. However, we were interested in clouds because of their shapes, movements, and means of transportation. How they accumulate the world’s history and then drop it off at another location. How they move without borders or limitations. We released our healing clouds hoping that the energy put forth would fall and offer nourishment to places suffering from extractive industries, deforestation, monocropping, environmental injustices, and pollution.
photographs made from converting digital camera into a pinhole camera
(prints)
(2018)
Entangled Multiplicities speaks to webs of complexities. The video is comprised of layered footage of extraction, fracking, catastrophe, population growth, nuclear testing and its celebration, overlaid with biological imagery of fungi, algae and plants consuming and or being consumed. This video explores how these compounded events create a complicated reality that is difficult to assess, remedy, or inhabit. Entangled Multiplicities was projected and played in a loop in the exhibition, Gently Radical Changing.
Hericium erinaceus, linen, raw silk, and wool dyed with: Cutch, indigo, madder root, rabbit brush, micaceous clay, glass, elm
Made in collaboration with Tewa Women United. This work was made as a remediation gesture for the polluted waters of the Rio Grande. Waters that have long suffered violence and injustice at the hands of humans. Lion’s Mane Hericium erinaceus medicinally supports brain and heart function, protects against oxidation in the body, is anti-inflammatory, and has been shown to be effective in fighting cancer cells.
Mycoremediation workshop hosted in Española, New Mexico with Tewa Women United as part of the Exhibition, Gently Radical Changing. This workshop/performance was directed towards empowering the community through providing tools and information for ways to remediate their lands and homes with mushroom and mycelium cultivation. I first gave a brief description of fungal biochemistry and then went through the cultivation process, also making 7 more remediation pillows to be buried with To Pass Through Safely. Participants took home bricks of mycelium with instructions for care to observe their growth for six weeks. After their bricks produced flushes of oyster mushrooms many of the participants came back to the Healing Food Oasis and buried their bricks for continued remediation.
Special thanks to Melodia D’Amour and Joel Silverston for their tremendous support, assistance, and knowledge with the workshop.
(2018)
Collaboration with artist, Rachel Zollinger
Soil collected from four geographic locations, indigo, New Mexico Ponderosa Pine, magnets (dimensions: 30’x 12’)
A topographic map of the New Mexican Rio Grande Water Basin, specifically the areas of Española, Los Alamos, White Rock, and Pajarito Mountain, was painted in soil collected from each respective region. This was done to honor those places through the skin of the place - the soil. Furthermore, painting a topographic map in soil depicts a map as it truly is, as a representation of something that can and most certainly will change and erode over time. The Rio Grande is painted on the map in a tiny-blue indigo line.
This mural locates the problematic chemical structures engaged with throughout the exhibition, Gently Radical Changing. These chemicals are made up of the building blocks of all life, but it is their arrangement that makes them harmful. Viewers were invited to take action with this piece and rearrange the materials to create new forms of life. In order for this to take place, viewers had to engage, otherwise the “toxins” remained in their fixed states. Each wooden bar was backed with magnets and could be moved to a location with three corresponding dots on the wall. Throughout the map, hints for nourishing structures could be found. Collaboration and play were encouraged.
Collaboration with Pleutrous cornucopiae
Weaving with fibers dyed with: indigo, madder root, and cochineal, micaceous clay, glass, elm
Bryson's built laboratory inside of her studio provides a performative space wherein the rituals of mycological cultivation are enacted. This laboratory was built by Bryson and contains biological lab equiptment that she has hacked and built herself. Due to the great potential for contamination of the mycelial materials she commonly uses, every action within the space must be done with intention and attention to detail. This space also provides a gallery, as visitors may step into the lab and observe the fungal materials in various stages of development.
Linen and raw silk dyed with: Rabbit brush, indigo, sandalwood, osage, madder root, cochineal, annatto, micaceous clay, glass, elm, Pleurotus ostreatus and Pleurotus cornucopiae
(dimensions variable)
This remediation pillow and installation were made for The Healing Foods Oasis, a permaculture restoration project designed by Beata Tsosie-Peña and built and maintained by TWU and the Española community. The purpose of this project was to restore a damaged landscape and bring back traditional Tewa foods and medicinal plants to the area. Many of these traditional plants have been lost or are unable to be used/harvested because of the contamination of the surrounding ecology due to the development of nuclear weaponry at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
To Pass Through Safely was made as an addition to the terraced, permaculture landscape. This piece, and 7 other remediation pillows were installed in a swale on the uppermost terrace-level. This layer directly catches and channels water that runs off from the City Hall parking lot. The remediation pillows, filled with Pleurotus ostreatus, act as a filtration-system, filtering the Aromatic Hydrocarbons from the water. The imagery on the quilted covering was developed through conversations with TWU. It depicts a wheel with equal arms which honor the four seasons as well as the Four Directions (blue, white, red, yellow). It also depicts the petals of many flowers coming together to form a community – much like a healing farmscape. This piece was given to the ground on April 28, 2018.
Targeted contaminant: Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons, exhaust and crude oil run off from parking lot
Impacts: Probable carcinogen, inhalation and dermal contact can cause cancer
Ganoderma lucidum (reishi mushroom) grown onto glass
Like plants, fungi are stimulated by stressors which cause adaptations and can break habits. This is true for humans too but is often easily forgotten. In this work, the reishi mushroom was put in adverse growing conditions without much oxygen, but through searching and shifting normal growth, it grew into this space and found what it needed.
I am amazed by the response to stress made by the biological community, but particularly that of the fungi. As creatures who have inhabited this planet for over 3 billion years, their adaptation strategies and digestive capacities are incredible, and truly unlike any other. I am interested in the lessons we can learn from these beings and also how we (humans) can work with them to help resolve the damage we have done to the planet that we share with all of life. Trauma and Matura, are anagrams of one another and this reishi reflects both arrangements. I ask, how can we grow and adapt through our own stressors and traumas? How can we make changes to thrive in the unfavorable conditions we find ourselves in today – ecologically, politically, socially, and psychologically?
This series contains ongoing experiments that Bryson is working on within her lab. The petri dishes are mycelium growing on inkjet photographs that have been briefly dipped in agar medium. Most inkjet inks have a complex chemical makeup and even contain some of the same heavy metals found in mine-tailings. In this experiment specific species of mycelium are trained to digest and transform these chemical toxins. At once the photo is overtaken by the mycelium, creating a visual site of transformation, highlighting the agency of the mycelium as well as pointing to how dissolution can provide opportunities for strength and resiliency.
The glass jar experiments contain soil soaked with crude oil collected from a fracking site in Navajo Nation in New Mexico, and Trametes versicolor (turkey tail) mycelium. Slowly the mycelium is consuming the crude oil. This sculpture provides visual and visceral moments to observe this process, and will further provide a resilient strain of turkey tail mycelium that Bryson will grow out to be applied to land pollution at the site of its origin.
2016, Santa Fe Art Institute, Santa Fe, NM
Land Arts of the American West artists, in collaboration with the Santa Fe Art Institute and Water Rights Residents, presented a one night participatory event where Water itself was treated with rights as a living being. Through the creation of a visual and interactive performance the artists investigated how water sinuously cycles from place to place and hand to hand with stories exchanged.
Performers:
Kaitlin Bryson, Nancy Dewhurst, Joerael Elliott, Jeanette Hart-Mann, Hollis Moore, Hamshya Rajkumar, Molly Zimmer, Rachel Zollinger
Participating Artists:
Kaitlin Bryson, Nancy Dewhurst, Joerael Elliott, FICTILIS, Annie Danis, Rose Linke, Ruth Le Gear, Jeanette Hart-mann, Ryan Henel, Hollis Moore, Hamshya Rajkumar, Molly Zimmer, Rachel Zollinger
Molds For Futures is a video compilation showcasing microscope imagery of hyphae and spores of Trichoderma and Aspergillus species of molds that were cultivated (by accident) in my lab. Though these molds are unfavorable for cultivation and are seen as contaminants, I am interested in the social parallels that can be drawn from the concept of contamination. In setting up the cultivation space, I invite many organisms by providing habitat and sugars. How can I morally adhere to "sterility" when I provide this type of environment? Who am I to determine who lives where?
Trichoderma in particular is an important ascomycete who paves the way for other microorganisms in the soil. As one of the most important compost starters, Trichoderma plays an integral role in the recycling of Earth's materials. Molds For Futures is meant to showcase the beauty of these molds as a nod to their lives, and to illuminate the potential of working with contaminants.
Collaboration with Ganoderma lucidum
Micaceous clay, glass, elm
Confluence (2016) is a video installation made as a gesture to visualize the two polar aspects of Bryson’s psyche merging into one, or the process of individuation, described by Carl Jung, as the unison of our conscious and unconscious minds. Within this layered video installation, Bryson embodies each aspect of the psyche - the light and the dark. The bodies skip towards one another in a dizzying lack of advancement. The environment continues to circle and change, but the two bodies seem to be stuck in space, trying to become one. Although there are some moments of graying, the reality of the desired wholeness is transient and oscillating.
The installation of this video projected onto the water bowls portrays the inherent difficulty of the confluence of these polarities. The bowls delineate contained space, contained bodies of water, impossible to merge together. The terracotta bowls were made in the process of pinching the clay into vessels. In this regard, their surface holds the memory of Bryson’s fingertips, of her hands – of their making. Laid all together on the ground and filled with water, they represent a mind full of separate memories. Water stores memory, and water is the element of emotion. This tactile composition, along with the projection of the moving bodies is a sort of impossible confluence, strived for but not entirely obtained.
This work is a remediative sculpture that is was offered to a site of heavy metal contamination along the banks of the San Juan River.
Materials: Pillow: naturally dyed linen, undyed wool, stuffed with Pleurotus ostreatus mycelium, oak sawdust; Incubation space: wood stained with indigo, paint, plexiglass vitrine
Plywood, stencils, paint, fiber, bamboo
(dimensions variable)
Produced by the Submergence Collective. Website for the project/collective is currently under construction.
As part of the Danda Ecosystem Monitoring Program, this work was created for the ecology and students of Pratiman-Neema Memorial Foundation in Siddathanagar, Nepal.
A total of six pitfall traps were installed on the west side of the campus with our team and students. The site selection for the pitfall traps was decided through conversation with the director and manager of the school. The site includes a transition zone between wetland to grassland to monitor a riverbank ecosystem. The pitfall monitoring sites contain a wooden platform covering a plastic cup, which is embedded into the ground. The wooden blocks were hand-painted with students using a stencil technique. Each wooden block depicts a different type of insect: Spider, Ladybug, Cicada, Ant, Centipede, and Beetle. A colored flag on a bamboo stick marks each site. On the flag is an embroidered image of the footprints that each insect makes as they walk across the soil.
Students will collect and identify arthropods from the pitfall traps in order to measure surface active arthropod activity. This data provides information about habitat conditions. The presence, absence, abundance and diversity of particular arthropods provide supporting documentation on the ecological condition of the monitoring site. Because arthropods are essential to processes like decomposition and pollination, systems that humans depend on, it is important to learn more about their communities. The monitoring sculptures become a small nature walk. The colorful flags and pitfall traps help orient students as they navigate through the monitoring site. Over time a path will be established by students as they walk throughout the site to collect data.
Plywood, Nepalese fiber, hand-drawn identification zines and guidebooks
(dimensions variable)
Produced by the Submergence Collective. Website for the project/collective is currently under construction.
As part of the Danda Ecosystem Monitoring Program, this work was created for the ecology and students of Pratiman-Neema Memorial Foundation in Siddathanagar, Nepal.
Citizen-science toolkits were created to assist students in the engagement with the artworks installed on site. We hope that when the students wear the toolkits, they become active agents and performers who are engaged with data collection and the improvement and health of the Danda River. The toolkits are wooden boxes made with materials local to Siddathanagar, Nepal.
Within the Citizen-Science toolkits are three handmade guidebooks: Arthropod Identification, Qualitative Data, and a Botanical Field Guide. The kits also contain a handmade bag filled with writing and scientific utensils, a set of five vials for collecting plant and water samples, and a film camera that can be used by students for taking photographs. The toolkit unfolds in a manner so that students may kneel or sit in order to draw and observe their surroundings; using the toolkit as a table/workspace while collecting data in the field. The strap and design on the front of the box references hand-made Dhaka fabric local Nepalese textiles
Pleurotus ostreatus (oyster mushrooms) growing on rotting mushroom under glass
Archival inkjet print
In 2015 the San Juan River was polluted with over three million gallons of toxic mine-waste. This environmental disaster took place near Silverton, Colorado, at the abandoned Gold King Mine when an EPA cleanup crew punctured a hole in the mountain with a backhoe where the waste was being stored. The cascade of toxic waste spilled directly into the Animas River, and eventually met the San Juan River. Both of these rivers are vital resources for communities throughout the arid Southwest region, but particularly for Native lands. In the years since, little has been done to reverse these impacts, and much of these metals still line the river bottom.
Bryson grew a pair of "remediation shoes" to be worn enacting a mycoremediation process called biosorption. In this process, fungal mycelium can immobilize heavy metals within their biomass by merely coming into contact with heavy metals.
This project continues to be in experimental phases
9’x13’
Poplar, mixed media
Sedimentary rock is deposited at the Earth’s surface and is derived or ground down from preexisting rock. It is a completely recycled geologic product made from materials that have been weathered or eroded and then compressed by hydrologic or atmospheric processes over eons. Sandstone is the sedimentary rock that composes the vast mesa of Mexican Hat and Muley Point. This environment was once a shallow ocean and has been carved out by water’s incomparable force thousands of years. I wandered through this ancient landscape and found the indentations of tinajas (basins) pocketing the sandstone boulders. These pools blossom after a rainfall and provide the desert’s creatures with life-giving waters. I was fascinated by these basins, they were nurturing, provisional, and formulaic. They grow because of the lichens, who slowly eat away at the sandstone.
Over a period of 4 days - from sunrise to sunset - I grind into a sandstone boulder to create a tinaja as a small sculpture and offering to catch rainwater, providing another watering hole for the reticent desert life. Although this was an unecessary act, it felt important. My attempt at creating a tinaja in a such a short period speaks to human futility and a timescale shift that I had never experienced or thought of before. It was one of the first moments I experienced my brevity, and where I really questioned my lifelong desire to leave or make a mark. While I was out there grinding on the stone I made a promise to myself and the Earth that I would only make marks that fostered life.
Bryson uses long-exposure photography at dusk to create images of her body decomposing into the ground below. This moment creates an uncanny visual tension, but reminds us that decay is an apt symbol for regrowth. In To Maintain Oneself by Self-Sown Seeds (white) Bryson is lifting herself up to rise again, and in Sporulation | Release (black) Bryson is resting and resolved in knowing that the release of her spores will produce new and abundant life.
In Holism, Bryson offers a part of herself in a gesture of reciprocity to the cacti she works with. She transforms her skin using the needles of the cacti that she has embroidered or woven into. For over three hours she poked at her skin with the cactus needles and ink, resulting in a tattoo on each of her shins. The image of the tattoo is a rudimentary drawing of a stoma (pl. stomata), which is the cellular structure responsible for respiration after the process of photosynthesis. The stomata are like microscopic mouths allowing for a gas exchange to take place. Bryson was both offering her skin in an effort of exchange with the cacti, and also recognizing her and the cacti's sameness in the need to breathe. Although plant/human gaseous exchanges are different in molecular makeup, they are dependent upon one another.
In Alter | Altar, Bryson provides an immersive sculptural environment to act as a platform through which viewers may physically step into and be a part of the process of mycoremediation. This 9’ x 7’ x 12’ sculpture was built out of wooden hexagonal frames and glazed in waxed and naturally-dyed canvas, and polyethylene sheeting. The exterior materials were tightly stretched over the wooden frame so that the interior was sealed, making it humid and hospitable for the biological materials living within. Bryson collected mine-waste from an abandoned coal mine from Madrid, New Mexico to bring into the sculpture to be remediated by the saprophytic mushroom Pleutrous ostreatus, or pearl oyster. This waste was laden with heavy metals such as lead, arsenic, and cadmium. Slowly, several oyster mushrooms fruited from these tailings. The interior of the piece was built with layered shelves and included plants and insects to show the range of diversity of the fungal ecosystem as well as point to the necessity of creating a remediation team to not only provide a healthy and diverse habitat, but also allow for series of biochemical processes to ensue within and feed the microbial masses. Within the framework of the sculpture the materials transformed daily.
Pom was conceived as a piece to provide examples of alternative growing containers. Pomegranates are eaten, hollowed out, sewn together as vessels, and then microgreens are planted inside. The plants grew for a duration of time, but ultimately the containers were overtaken by molds. The remaining piece showcases the skin, or pelt, hung on the wall to pay homage to the lives that were held in these vessels.
Experiments out in the field cultivating endophytic mycelium from surrounding desert plants to be taken to labs and sequenced. Bryson carries her "glove box" with her to these locations, so that she has a portable sterile field and can culture these leaf samples successfully.
Needle weaving on Opuntia Stricta, which continues to grow as it heals over the scaring.
(2013)
Durational performance
To become one of the truly dead we must allow ourselves to fully decompose and pass on to the next life, or the next phase of our lives. In this performance Bryson constructs 36 coffins made from plant materials for animals, insects, and fruit so that they may decompose out in the open to be observed in all states of their deterioration. Bryson is interested in what grows off of the dead, and how we can learn from this liminal site of transformation.
The looms providing the structure for the needle weavings are made between two or three different plants, each of which resides in its own pot or home. This above-the-surface weaving is a reflection of the connections made between the individual plants through the mycorrhizal network in the soil below. Since much of the work the mycelium does is microscopic, Bryson manually creates these connections above ground to communicate its vital, nurturing existence. The naturally dyed silk threads that she introduces to the cacti mimic the individual hypha in that they pierce into the plant tissue and extend outward to join a community of other threads, thus forming a network— a woven matrix. Like the mycelium, a warp and weft creates a structure that is both strong and flexible built through a community of woven threads. Within the history of weaving, many disparate components – textiles, cultural values, cosmologies, symbols – come together to form a pattern and unique story that teaches and replenishes each generation.
Archival inkjet print
(2016)
From the ghost performance series
This series of photographs illustrates how our limitations or burdens hold us back, but also, in some ways, support us.
a microcatacomb made for 189 dead bees, to commemorate their lives, their work, and their loss.
(2015) 27”x 19” beeswax, wool dyed with rabbit brush, red willow, yarn
This performance is simply a meditation on the need to clean and groom in order to make space for the next to come. Bryson represents this as she washes Navajo Churro wool in the Rio Grande in preparation to be spun and dyed.
