Clara Kuehnel, Interdisciplinary Sculpture, 2026
Project Overview
memento, 2025.
cast mycelium growth (work in progress).
mycelium plaque featuring an excerpt of a poem I wrote.
Process
I wanted to recreate this excerpt from a poem through a more physical and visual representation of writing, allowing for multiple ways of reading the text, as well to have it exist as a solid object. I lasercut the letters out of craft wood board and glued them to a larger plywood board, before creating a plastic vacuum-form mold from the positive. With this plastic mold, I was able to pack in my wood substrate inoculated with the reishi mycelium.
After ~1.5 weeks of growth in the plastic mold, we found that the mycelium had not really grown as much in the surfaces pressed up against the plastic mold, which were the “top” part of the piece with all the words – and thus carefully flipped the mycelium + wood substrate cast onto a plastic lid to expose it to more airflow/oxygen. The flipped over cast slab looked like it had lost almost all definition in the lettering, likely due to the relief of the letters not being deep enough to begin with. However, even just two more days of growth seemed to almost bring back some of the clarity of the words (although I had anticipating losing some legibility anyway) in places where the raised letters made contact with the plastic covering. Plus, the new growth of the mycelium presented a beautiful patterning across the surface of my slab.
I decided to leave the inoculated cast in the incubator for the month over winter break to allow for more growing time, and I’m excited to see the results of further growth!!
Learn More
@placebopilled on instagram