Gigantic spores, All Things Fungi Festival
We wanted to create a clay based creative workshop where people could practise basic and fundamental ceramic hand-building skills and explore a facet of mycology that is often intimidating to the aspiring mycologist.
Spores remain out of reach to many fungi enthusiasts, as viewing them requires special oils and 1000x microscopes, but by using the same keys and systems of identification that microscopists use we could guide our participants through making human scale versions of spores, that in actual fact would often be similar in size to the grains of clay in the clay body itself.
We used air drying clay so participants could paint their spores to reflect the colours that mycologists produce when taking spore prints in aid of identification.