Mushroom Season

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If you were to ask what my current favourite piece was: this is it.
Burned on maple,
This piece is sentimental to me for a variety of reasons, or a variety of themes.

The first of which:
Mushrooms.
I’ve become enthralled with mushrooms over the last couple of years, passionately foraging and photographing the different fungi species found across the Kootenays. It’s become a bit of an obsession, and I often find myself prioritizing the hunt over anything else.
There’s 18 different mushrooms species burned into this piece: all that I personally found and photographed.
and ate- when applicable.

The main feature of this piece is the American Badger; an elusive and mysterious carnivore known for being an incredibly powerful digger.
A seemingly random subject for the piece, but I chose the badger for two different specific reasons:

The first being its ability to tunnel, which ties into my passion of exploring the old historical mine shafts honeycombing through the mountains around my town; long since abandoned. Most of the tunnels have been lost to time, but I’ve made an effort over the last couple of years to track down old coordinates and explore the abandoned sites.
This exploration led me somewhere unexpected- the old historical ghost town of Sandon BC, the very heart of the mining boom that formed the Kootenay’s back in the 1800’s.
It was here where I spent my summer, working with an old tesla generator that’s been plugging away for 128 years, and where I recouped my artistic inspiration that had been dwindling.

The second reason I chose a badger, is kind of niche.
Only a small demographic of people will understand the reference, but for those that do: it’s a blast from the past. A song from a simpler time: 17 years ago to be exact, when youtube had just started taking off and we hardly had the internet on our phones.
A video about badgers and mushrooms,
….and snakes.
Intrigued? Click here: and prepare to be confused and likely underwhelmed, you really just had to be there for it to fully appreciate it this reference.

There’s a few other themes to the piece, but I will just let you discover them for now.

This piece is not currently for sale, as it is part of my gallery exhibition.
And because I’m still too attached.