As if in a trance the story of my 4-week journey on the Playa in Summer Lake poured out of me. Eloquent and heartfelt .. full of both verbal and visual imagery .. I painted a picture of my emotional and artistic journey through to the afterglow.

And the Universe decided to eat my homework. Immediately following that gut-wrenching loss, I had a weirdly difficult time getting a Playa post to … well … post … on Instagram. So! A conclusion I believe most rational humans would come to; I understand now that The Playa doesn’t want me to tell it’s secrets. That’s cool. I can respect that. I do, however, want to share the creative work I did out there so I’m giving that narrative another shot.

As I hit the save button, I will very briefly touch upon the spiritual side of my time in the Oregon Outback to tell you that it was absolutely transformative. It was the reprieve from expectations and capitalism that I needed and I feel more like myself than I have in years. I’m giggling .. maybe .. too much. I am seeing so much beauty and inspiration around me and even more than normal, I’m impressed by the people I continue to meet that do extraordinary things and have such incredible stories. Y’all are amazing and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am one lucky girl to walk among you.

AN ART AND ECOLOGY RESIDENCY IN THE OREGON OUTBACK

With sights set on extending my fiber optic sculpture Hyphae, for my 4 weeks on The Playa I brought materials to explore only very specific things. If you’ve never done a deep dive into the biology of fungi, a super quick lesson before I go on so you understand the origin of my Hyphae sculpture …

The hyphae and mycelium are two terms used to describe the structure of multicellular fungal species. Hyphae are threadlike filaments made up of fungal cells, whereas mycelium is the mass of hyphae that forms the fungal body. Simply put, hyphae are the building blocks of mycelium.

My number one task was to explore creating a fungal body that the filaments of my sculpture could lead to. Learning from my first go at mushroom sculptures (see The Forest Rises), I wanted this iteration of fungus to be more realistic. The checklist of desirables also included ‘alien yet familiar’, ‘resilient yet delicate’, ‘lightweight’, ‘detachable’, and ‘reusable’.

After years of working with silicone for more practical purposes (nod to smooth-on), I determined it to be the material for the job so I brought a gallon of silicone, my mixing tools, and a lot of pigment and set out to create a realistic fungal-like object. Through sheer limitation of available supplies, I ended up creating a pretty awesome process out of Playa mud and some leftover plastic. The results just kept getting better the more I did it and I had a lot of fun figuring it all out.

Another, less lofty goal was to stretch Hyphae out overhead. Hyphae’s tentacles can extend 65 feet and I don’t have a studio in LA so this was my chance to stretch out and play with creating dimension in the air.

Finally .. after both the fungus and the dimension had been created I installed on The Playa. Dustin Hamman and I collaborated on the soundscape (embedded here) by layering his ambient track of sounds collected from Summer Lake over a bed of auditory entrainment frequencies. One of my cohorts shared that he was so relaxed after experiencing Hyphae, he had a hard time getting home and proceeded to have the best night’s sleep he’d had since he’d gotten there.

The soundscape from a sculpture I did on the Playa at Summer Lake, Oregon. There is a bed of isochronic tones with layers of sounds sampled from the Playa itself. This was a collaborative piece between myself and Dustin Hamman who was also an Artist in Residence at the Playa.

You can see my Hyphae on the Playa installation here.

Chelsea, Becca, Mark, Shawna, Dustin, Pete, Susan, Ruby, Colleen, Vince, Austyn, and Scot. You guys were easy like Sunday morning.