Munusculi tantilli – Very small gifts.

About ninety percent of all trees and plants are engaged in life supporting symbiotic exchanges with microscopic fungi at the cellular level in their root systems. Lichens are fungi which host single celled cyanobacteria or algae. Cells of green plants contain chloroplasts, which may also have been cyanobacteria eons ago. The mitochondria of each our own cells may have once originated from a different life form as well.

Life, our human life, is dependent on the tiny gifts of tiny lives. We cannot see most of these organisms, yet they surround us. They are beautiful. Fascinating transparent layers of activity, sheer textures, whispered patterns, organelles and organisms within organism create beautiful forms.

The works of Munusculi tantillum are inspired by the gifts of form and function which surround us, unseen.

The Venere Series uses the language of the carnivale and the grotesque as described by Mikhail Bahktin. Each sculpture references both human and floral shapes, which both menace and identify with the viewer. The intrigue of the forms is in the dance between the otherness of the floral forms and the references to human anatomy.

This body of sculptural work investigates the layered symbiotic relationships between mycorhizzae (an underground variety of fungi) and forest biota. I enjoy pushing the “squeamish” factor in my work, dancing between the qualities of hideous and beautiful.

In the Venere Series, I use signifiers that are available to the 21st century man and woman on an everyday basis. Fruit are forms with which both ancient and modern men and women are very familiar. Fruit are the reproductive organs of plants, and part of a plant strategy to spread its seed by animals or insects. A sly and tempting persuasion to do the plant’s bidding. From 40th millennium BCE until the present day, there can’t have been anything more easily identified with life’s natural cycles than a fruit.