Thoughts about Lichens

Thoughts about Lichens

Today, I’m reading about lichens. How they cover as much as 8% of the earth’s surface (more than is covered by tropical rain-forests), how they are ancient composite organisms made up of fungi, algae and cyanobacteria, how they can exist in the extremest conditions. Merlin Sheldrake calls them “small worlds” in his book Entagled Life - How fungi make our worlds, change our minds, and shape our futures. “Lichens are places where an organism unravels into an ecosystem and where an ecosystem congeals into an organism.”

I’m very interested in this miracle of symbiosis and collaboration, not to metion the aesthetic versatility they display. On my recent travels to South Africa, I encountered them everywhere - pink lichen growing directly on the red hard earth in the Cederberg mountain range, bright yellowish-green ones on coastal rocks, exposed to sun and Atlantic sea-spray and salt. What happens when mosses and lichen are neighbours?

I’m thinking about how to build an impression of organisms-growing-on-other-organisms in my work, how I can play with these soft-hard surfaces, how I can use these textures, colours to create a sense of encrustation, composite beings, colonies (as you can see in my recent experiments below).

GOLDEN HARVEST - OR MY 40 DAY AUTUMN CHALLENGE

GOLDEN HARVEST - OR MY 40 DAY AUTUMN CHALLENGE

I have become increasingly disillusioned  and alarmed by social media. I love seeing a kind of chronicle of my work, with colours, inspirations, studio snapshots and finished artwork curated into that neverending tiled layout. I love selecting images thoughtfully, matching moods and colours. But the perils of social media have become impossible to ignore, and we know it. Yet, we creatives (I) cling to these platforms, thinking that they are essential for reaching more people, for displaying our work. And it’s true, it’s difficult to come up with a benign alternative.

So, I am embarking on an #autumnchallenge for myself. Here is an experiment: For the next 40 days, or until this year’s autumn craftshow season starts on the 9th of November, I want to create and post something new every day. A thought, a photograph of my autumn meanderings, a snapshot of my jewellery bench, or a drawing. Some kind of real creative output. The overarching theme for me now is the changing season around me, harvesting, the golden slanted light, the stark contrast between the living and the dying.

I will not post these daily snippets on any social media platforms I don’t own, but rather on this blog. 

The purpose of this 40-day immersion is two-fold.

I want to see if I can create a curated chronicle of ideas that will give me the same sense of satisfaction elsewhere than on my Insta feed. But in an online space without the distractions, without the echochambers, and without the precarious feeling that my creative work is no longer under my own control. 

More importantly, I want to generate momentum for another productive period of making, I want to dive into the studio, to draw, to enamel, to saw and bend and solder and compose, to put together what I have gathered over the past few months and watch whatever emerges.  I want to share this process with those who want to see, but without making myself dependent on likes and responses. And I want to hold myself accountable, to move against the tide of short attention spans and superficial ideas and lack of concentration and decline in deep though that is spreading across the globe like an epidemic.

If you wish to accompany me on my explorations, you are exactly right here on my blog. I’ll see how I feel and reflect on this period of making - hopefully a rich October harvest - afterwards. 

Photograph by Knipserchris.