Slow Growing in the Time of Trees

Over a one-year period, the Slow Growing in the Time of Trees Collaboratory will cultivate an interdisciplinary creative space that examines:  

  • the durational nature of trees, mushrooms and humans  
  • the symbiosis between trees and human and non-human partners  
  • naturally occurring, as well as inoculated, living mushroom cultures that produce both blooms and invisible structures interconnected with trees  
  • durational interactions between natural and reclaimed materials for contemplative and aesthetic purposes   
  • bridging the space between humans, sculpture and the garden situated within a specific site: the Lynden Sculpture Garden  
  • and the cultural connections to the natural world at the Lynden Sculpture Garden. 

We hope to bring experiential awareness to the long duration of tree-time, in the face of human and non-human interventions that can be generative and functional as well as non-functional and experimental for both human and non-human ends. 

Members

  • Yevgeniya Kaganovich (Art & Design, PSOA) 
  • Lisa Moline (Art & Design, PSOA) 
  • Lane Hall (English) 
  • Katharine Beutner (English) 
  • Jim Charles (Art & Design, PSOA) 
  • Pavonis Giron (Undergraduate Researcher) 
  • Anthony Zelazoski (Undergraduate Researcher) 
  • Polly Morris (Community Partner, Lynden Sculpture Garden) 
  • Jeremy Stepian (Community Partner, Lynden Sculpture Garden) 
  • Robert Kaleta (Community Partner, Lynden Sculpture Garden) 

Events

Slow Growing in the Time of Trees: Tree and Mushroom Walk

October 5 @ 1:30 pm – 3:30 pm | Lynden Sculpture Garden

Free and open to the public. 

Robert Kaleta, Land Manager, will lead the walk around the Lynden Sculpture Garden to tell the story of the existing trees: identify various species, and learn about the physiological changes that trees go through each season and how each tree species fits into the larger ecosystem. Yevgeniya Kaganovich will discuss her tree intuit chair growing sculptures, as part of her divergent fates project at Lynden. Participants will encounter fruiting myceliated sculptures, as well as naturally occurring species at Lynden Sculpture Garden, while collaborators Yevgeniya Kaganovich, Lisa Moline, Lane Hall and Jim Charles identify the mushrooms and discuss the symbiotic relationship between mushrooms and trees, as well as their collaborative intervention into this symbiosis through cultivated species. 

UWM Land Acknowledgement: We acknowledge in Milwaukee that we are on traditional Potawatomi, Ho-Chunk and Menominee homeland along the southwest shores of Michigami, North America’s largest system of freshwater lakes, where the Milwaukee, Menominee and Kinnickinnic rivers meet and the people of Wisconsin’s sovereign Anishinaabe, Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Oneida and Mohican nations remain present.   |   To learn more, visit the Electa Quinney Institute website.