Mushrooms, Health and Climate Change
Knowing what is edible in the environment around us can be a matter of life or death. Food is so readily accessible in modern times that it is easy to forget that knowledge of what is edible has been developed over millions of years by human beings from observation. Mistaken identification of a mushroom can be deadly. Severe poisoning may require organ transplantation or even cause death.
Mushrooms can be identified through spore printmaking. The development of the spore print is comparable to exposing and developing a print in the darkroom process. Students can develop critical thinking skills as they learn about how artists can change images. A stereotype is the idea of one example as being representative of all others. The printmaking process demonstrates how images can change overtime during reproduction through artistic intervention. My lessons will include printmaking processes that can be adapted by art teachers for photography.
Nature is indifferent to us. However, certain organisms like fungi which are 2.2% of the planet’s total biomass have evolved to survive. (25) Like mushrooms that adapt to their environments we need to share information to learn how to improvise to survive in our changing climate. (26) Figure 1 illustrates some of the varieties of mushrooms that can be found locally in Connecticut in during the fall season. The pressures of the climate change crisis are forcing us to re-evaluate the present threat that human destruction of the environment since the Industrial Revolution has on our health. There are lifeforms like fungi that have evolved to survive over millions of years that we can learn from. The motif of the mushroom is like a Baroque vanitas symbol that reminds us of the lethality of ignoring our climate change crisis. (27) The most plentiful biomass on our planet consists of microbes. put that in perspective, animals of which humans are included are only 0.47% of the earth’s biomass. (28) Molecularly fungi are closer related to animals than plants and have the potential to treat disease. (29) Mushrooms are deeply embedded in the natural environment and fungal networks may convey “info chemicals” to plants. (30) Students can the world that weave science, art and history together in so many unexpected ways with this unit.
Figure 1, Collected Mushrooms, 2023, Photograph, By Kasalina Maliamu Nabakooza.
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