I don’t know if there’s a clear link between my art and the world of fungi. It’s not like I’ve ever stuck a morel on a mug, or designed an Amanita into my print work.

 I just know that mushrooms are some of the most alluring, seductive and tantalizing of living things.

 I can’t speak for anyone else… but when I was a kid, my mother’s final word on wild mushrooms was ‘eat them and die in agony kid’.

Thus, when I went on my first canoe trip when I was twelve, and my leader (the legendary Dale Hulme of New Directions Youth Ministry) started harvesting and frying shaggy manes and horse mushrooms, I felt like I was doing something subversive, vaguely reckless, and utterly thrilling.

Mushroom dogging is probably a particularly insane vocation for me, in that I’m a notorious hypochondriac. Given that some mushrooms (like the infamous Amanita ocreata/virosa/verna complex… AKA the ‘destroying angels’ ) can cast their toxins- latent- into your body for up to a day and then slowly liquify your liver… it’s amazing that I’m ever able to sleep after consuming the things.

But dang… they’re beautiful and oh so tasty…

The orange, ramified in the image above is actually a fungus attacking a mushroom. These weird, chimera entities are popularly known as lobsters… and many people (myself included) eat them with gusto. Even though we can’t be 100% sure as to what the underlying mushroom actually is.

And Chanterelles. Always chanterelles. Those glorious little trumpet flowers of savory wonder. The second edible fungus I ever tried, and still one of the best.

I’m sure that I’ll have more to say about fungal pleasures in the future… but that’s enough for now. I’m too busy eating.