BEN KINSLEY

Lately I’ve found myself at art exhibitions in New York City, not looking at the art or engaging with the social ritual of the opening, but instead giving ad-hoc lectures about mushrooms using my phone’s photo gallery as a visual aid. This trumping of art by fungi has also infiltrated my studio practice, and the time I would normally dedicate to art making has been replaced with foraging in parks and forests. What began as humble pastime a little over a year ago has quickly ascended into obsession.1The root of this development can be traced to the Adirondack mountains, where my partner, Jessica Langley (also an artist) and I spend time each summer. There, it is a tradition to collect an artist’s conk2 during a hike, and upon return etch a commemorative drawing into its porous white flesh. As the mushroom dries the etched lines will bruise dark and become permanent (our camp has a small collection, the oldest dating back to 1935). While looking for artist’s conks on our many hikes we became tuned in to the vast quantity of fungi in the woods but had little other knowledge of this mysterious world.

In June of 2014 we met our friend (and glass artist) Thaddeus Wolfe at an art opening in Brooklyn. He had just returned from a foray with the New York Mycological Society in one of the many New York City parks, and he was sharing his haul with us via pictures on his phone. We were enthralled. He explained the difference between russulas (a gilled mushroom) and boletes (mushrooms with a spongy, tubular surface under the cap). To explain things further he made diagrammatic drawings in the gallery’s guest book, describing some basic identifying characteristics (such as free vs. attached gills, veiled stalks, the bulbous base of amanitas, etc.). We must have spent an hour talking mushrooms in the entryway of the gallery (notably longer than either of us spent with the work), and when we departed we made plans to attend the next NYMS outing together.

My first foray with the group took place in Central Park in late-June. Led by the expertise of Gary Lincoff,3 we traversed the park in search for as many types of summer mushrooms the group could find.4 At first Jessica and I couldn’t see a thing, but after some time and with some assistance, we honed our pattern recognition skills, and the mushrooms were all around us! After a couple of hours the three of us had collected a few edible russulas, a variety of good edible boletes, and a handful of lambsquarters. We took the train back to Queens and made a delicious brunch. After a couple more outings with the society and major hauls of choice edibles including chanterelles, black trumpets, oyster mushrooms, the corrugated-cap milky, and hen-of-the-woods,5 Jessica and I were seriously hooked.

West Oz

Ph: Duncan MacFarlene

for a typical forty ton humpback to breach the ocean’s surface – and breach is taken to mean at least fourty percent of its body is out of the water – it needs to reach speeds of at least thirty km an hour. reasons for the behaviour remain debated, with theories varying from mere pleasure, to courtship or shedding the skin of parasites.  it’s not uncommon for an adult to make multiple breaches, with the most recorded atone hundred and thrity jumps in ninety minutes.

A nuclear plant just 25 miles from NYC is leaking. Here’s the latest.