Mushroom Magic: spells for collective hope
Jessica Langley

Opening for Artwalk August 6 from 5-7pm

Artist Talk Saturday, August 15th from 6-8pm

These works are spells cast amidst an apocalyptic simulacra, where the boundary between the real and the virtual has grown porous. In a moment when our shared images, maps, and screens reshape what we call “real,” I make work that tries to move us toward repair rather than resignation.

The material origin of this work is the landscape. Mushrooms foraged in the Colorado mountains are processed into a handmade paper. The surface is textured, lumpy, and imperfect. I paint with gouache, watercolor, and ink, composing sigils: intentional, ritual drawings activated by touch, attention, and context. In the sculptural collages, the mushroom paper is mounted onto upcycled polystyrene with drawings that reference networks, doodles, and paths of wandering suggesting an interplay between indeterminacy and relationality. Their objecthood can be sensed; their power is enacted through shared hope and care.

My process is a kind of field practice. Foraging is guided by instinct and close observation rather than a fixed plan; it is a slow, attentive way to encounter a place, and opens possibilities for discovery and renewal. Mycology has sharpened how I look at landscape and led me to consider fungi not only as material but as agents in ecological repair. This practical knowledge informs my methods and motivates a commitment to sustainable materials and new narrative frames for the climate crisis.

Accompanying these works on paper are a series of playful ceramic illuminated sculptures which bring our attention to darkness and light. Each of these subjects points to a hidden world: mushrooms that stink, or spiders that play dead. Each of these is simply a representation of what they are as well as a reference to sexuality and sensuality. They question our presumptions of good/evil and present a softer, more nuanced approach to this prevailing dichotomy.

Across my work I aim to decenter the human subject in conversations about landscape, to complicate simple binaries of abstraction versus representation, and to show how cultural symbols of nature are experienced directly and through mediated images. These pieces invite viewers to notice materials, to consider interdependence, and to imagine futures shaped by care, repair, and adaptability.