Introduction
This unit explores the wide variety of usages of mushrooms in science and art. (1) Students will look closely at mushrooms and through interdisciplinary experiential learning explore how mushrooms connect humans with the world around us. Students will experience artmaking as a process. Using observation and response, they will develop new understanding of mushrooms as dynamic organisms with broad cultural associations that can be useful to humans in unexpected ways.
The main objective of this interdisciplinary visual arts unit is that students will experience how very close observation in visual art can heighten our interest in, and understanding of, the natural world. For example, I looked at the vivid details of “Two Narcissi and a Columbine, a Dragonfly and a Stag Beetle,” a watercolor drawing with charcoal by the French artist Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues The artist Le Moyne was sent to Florida by King Charles IX as a cartographer in 1564. He is “one of the earliest and most gifted botanical painters in European art.” (2) Seeing this artwork sparked my interest in watercolors like the ones we will discuss. This unit hopes to do the same for students in the art classroom.
Mesoamerican cultures believed mushrooms could provide a lightning bolt of enlightenment. (3) In the ancient world, Egyptians thought that mushrooms were “the magic food” of the Pharaohs. (4) In our current world, the specter of the mushroom cloud is an image which warns of the potential total destruction of humans and our planet. (5) But the mushroom can also help us. There are potential uses of chemicals extracted in the lab from mushrooms for cancer treatment. According to an article in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences, tumor growth can potentially be inhibited by chemicals extracted from mushrooms. (6) Mushrooms also offer solutions to land remediation from toxic waste. (7)
Teachers who use this unit will find that it can be applied across disciplines. Mushrooms are a fascinating topic and there are so many ways to incorporate new ideas into this framework. The influential nineteenth-century German scientist Alexander von Humboldt wrote:
Gradually, the observer realizes that these organisms are connected to each other, not linearly, but in a netlike, entangled fabric. (8)
Humboldt also inspired the created of the field of ecology by the artist Ernst Haeckel which describes the interconnected reliance living organisms have on the environment. (9)
The Mushroom Hunters by Langdon describes multiple uses of mushrooms as food sources and how they are valued culturally in different parts of the world. (10) Mycelium Running : how Mushrooms Can Help Save the World by Paul Stamets is a wonderful resource for teachers to access deeper understanding of mushrooms before teaching this unit. This text was the inspiration for spore printing of portobello mushrooms in lesson 2. Mushrooms release spores as they mature and how they do this varies by species. (11) Prints of mushroom spore can be used therefore to identity types of mushrooms. (12) The book Mycelium Running describes how the spore printing process can be used to identify fungi. (13) Students can learn that portobello mushrooms have been found to be a source of future energy for battery power. (14)The energy plants get from fungi come from mycelium, the network that feeds fungi, such as mushrooms. (15)
Today we are threatened by climate change and are contending with new challenges that make it necessary to be familiar with how we are impacted by the environment. Spores from fungi can “influence the weather by triggering the formation of water droplets that form rain and the ice crystals that form snow, sleet, and hail.” (16)
This visual art unit is centered on the mushroom motif that teachers can use to encourage students to make meaningful and aesthetically dynamic art. It teaches students patience and to appreciate what can be overlooked or underappreciated. (17) An exhibition at Somerset House in London, Mushrooms: The Art, Design and Future of Fungi, brought together mushroom-based art by Beatrix Potter, Cy Twombly and John Cage. (18) These artists demonstrate how science can serve as inspiration to artists. They are examples for students of artists that have used many rigorous art-making approaches. (19)
National Fellow Anna Herman, Agriculture, Food & Natural Resources Management suggested numerous innovative ways that mushrooms can be used in teaching. Herman described baking mushrooms into vessels which I consider to be sculptural art. She also explained how mushrooms can be repurposed as sustainably organic building materials or used as riparian buffers to aid in cleaning up land that has been polluted. Her garden school in Philadelphia is educating students and empowering them with offering financial compensation for their work. Students are learning real world lessons by being employed and developing leadership skills as they act as responsible stewards in the garden for students younger than them as role models. Teachers can model how we impact the world and have agency to create positive change in our environment through positive action and enquiry.
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