LIAM, INTERDISCIPLINARY SCULPTURE, 2025
Liam Davis is a sculptor born in Flagstaff Arizona, he grew up in Eugene Oregon, and now lives in Baltimore Maryland. He is pursuing a BFA in Interdisciplinary Sculpture with a minor in Photography at Maryland Institute College of Art (expected 2025), and works making furniture for a design studio in Hampden.
Project Overview
*Currently Unfinished*
I am working towards a mycelium representation of a speculative composite column. Constructing the column from and iron and c channel shapes cast in mycelium.
Refer to some of my previous work on this topic here.
Process
State of the Project
Unfortunately my mycelium has been rather slow growing.
I followed the standard mycelium composite casting procedure, except for one key difference. I used what I believe to be white oak jointer and planer wood chips/shavings that I took from my job, instead of the provided wood pellets. It is possible that there were some maple and ash shavings in there with the white oak. One potential issue is that these do not compress to the same degree that the smaller pellet substrate does, and so the mycelium does not grow as quickly. I also refrained from using any supplemental food from the substrate. I believe that I used a white oak inoculum.
I made my molds from PETG with 3d printed PLA pattern with the vacuum form. I printed with extra perimeter layers for a bit more integrity under the vacuum form heat.
Since my growth was slow 2 weeks after inoculating, we tried making up an experimental mycelium pick me up with the following technique.
I filled 2 50ml conical tubes with 20ml of grain spawn, and then poured in water until it read ~40ml.
Then I put them in the vortexer at 1000 for 15 min. Looking for the mycelium to have fallen off the grain.
Next I mixed 200ml of water with 50g of rice flower (4:1 ratio) and autoclaved it.
After that mixture was sterile, I added ~200ml more water to bring the ratio up to 8:1
In a new bottle I combined the liquid from one 50ml conical to 100ml of the rice flour liquid.
I used a 25ml pipette to carefully apply that liquid into my molds. I just added what felt right in the moment, doing my best not to oversaturate the substrate.
Unfortunately this did not speed up growth sufficiently that I was able to finish the project by the end of the semester, so it is hard to say that this is the best procedure to follow in the future. We did not do any control.
12/18/24 Update
Despite continued slow growth, I made the decision to demold the mycelium onto the mdf panel as I had been planning. I did my best to sterilize all sides of the panel with alcohol. The growth was not sufficient to completely hold the substrate together as I took them out of the mold, particularly at the angled corners of my parts. I had to make strategic cuts to parts to allow me to pull away the edges sufficiently. I sprayed down the substrate with sterile water as I placed it on the board.
The white “glazing” in the image is not mycelium growth, but more food. I made a mixture of 20g brown rice flour and 180g water to spread over the “column.” We found that when the brown rice and water mixture gets autoclaved it seems to consolidate the flour into a “loaf.” So I neglected to autoclave this time. I did find something similar happen even without autoclaving. Mixing the mixture with some sort of spoon or spatula seems to be more effective than shaking up the bottle. Potentially even after autoclaving.
I also filled up the 16 oz deli container seen in the center with sterile water and placed that towel in as well in an attempt to introduce more moisture into the sealed bag. One fear we have is that the MDF panel will be too much of a moisture sink to allow the mycelium to grow.
After this demanding I sealed up the panel in a bag with tape and placed it in the incubator at 34 C.
Learn More
I will do my best to update this page as this project progresses. Please feel free to reach out with any questions.