Existence has overpowered Books.
Today I slew a mushroom.
Emily Dickinson, 1874
During COVID lockdown, I foraged for fungi and made spore prints from hundreds of mushrooms gathered in the mountains, golf courses, city parks, my yard, and the beach. A spore print is made by placing the cap of a mushroom on paper or glass. Over time, the spores fall, producing a fine powder on the substrate.
Witnessing the spores drop is magical; it’s as if they are drawing themselves on the glass or paper I provide. Paradoxically, the images formed by the spores resemble photographic negatives. The piles of spores are 3-dimensional, fragile, and easily disturbed; in Spore Drift they are documented with the camera.
In Excitations, human cells (foreskin fibroblast and cancer) are tagged with a fluorophore, causing them to glow against a dark field (imaged with a widefield florescence microscope in the Wordemann Lab, Department of Physiology & Biophysics, University of Washington). While very different in source and scale, there are distinct formal connections to the spore prints; both series also reference the history of scientific photography.
About the Artist
In addition to a studio practice, Cummins is active in public art commissions and cross-disciplinary collaborations with artists and scientists.
Exhibits in 2019|2021 include Art Center Nabi Special Exhibition, Asia Culture Center, ISEA 2019, Gwangju, Republic of Korea; “Retícula”, ASKVII: UCSC Culture Gallery, Concepción Arte y Ciencia Biennial, Chile; Heller Gallery, NYC and Southwest Contemporary, Adelaide, South Australia. Public commissions were completed for the City of Seattle, the Washington State Arts Commission and the Exploratorium, San Francisco.
Cummins was recently an artist-in-residence at Ars Bioartica, BioArt Society, Kilpisjärvi Biological Station (far NW Lapland), University of Helsinki, Finland (June 2021). She is a Professor in the School of Art + Art History + Design, University of Washington, Seattle.
Image Credit: Spore Drift #14, © Rebecca Cummins, Courtesy of the Artist