We recently connected with Madge Evers and have shared our conversation below.

Madge, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s talk about innovation. What’s the most innovative thing you’ve done in your career?

Spores are tiny reproductive particles made within a mushroom’s gills or pores. When ready, and at astonishing speeds, mushrooms release millions of powdery spores into the air. The spores fly and float; they sometimes travel the world in rain clouds and sometimes land close to home. In whatever way they move, spores contain a fungi’s DNA and act as tiny seeds. People sometimes ‘catch’ spores on paper to help identify a mushroom; different species have different colored spores. This identification process is called a spore print. To make a spore print, remove a mushroom’s stem and place the cap, gill or pore side, down onto a piece of paper; cover with a cup or bowl. After 6-12 hours, lift the bowl, remove the cap, and if conditions are right, voila! The mushroom’s spores will leave a photographic-like image of the mushroom’s gills or pores on the paper. My innovation is that I’ve adapted the mushroom spore print as an art form. I work with fungi that I forage or grow to make abstract works on paper that portray the natural world’s familiarity and strangeness. When I first began working with mushrooms, I was uncertain. I wondered about the legitimacy of spores as an art medium, knew there’d be naysayers, but was profoundly inspired by the mysterious and beautiful imagery. I feel fortunate to have access to an art medium that, when I create with it, is alive. Mushrooms produce and release spores; my reliance on that process means the spore print art is created interdependently with mushrooms, my unwitting collaborators. Their participation means the work is partially wild.

Madge, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

During a 25-year hiatus from art-making, I created a family, taught English and reading, and learned a ton about plants, growing cycles, and the beauty of composting. I believe everything is connected; my family, the garden, and my students inform and inspire everything I do, including the imagery I create. In 2015, I started making mushroom spore print art with mushrooms I cultivated in my garden. Those first images were a revelation – they were sculptural, photographic, familiar, ephemeral – and ignited a creative reawakening. I began experimenting with the mushroom spore print form, and have been doing so ever since. Those playful experiments have led to new mediums, including the cyanotype, an alternative photographic process that is both magical and immediately gratifying. My background in teaching prepared me to conduct cyanotype workshops for people of all ages. I usually work on paper, but often try new approaches and materials, like paint. My work is available through my website, Instagram, in-person studio visits, or during gallery exhibitions. Earlier this year, I had a show at the wonderful Brattleboro Museum and Art Center in Vermont, which was a joy and an honor and confirmed that others found the work compelling. It’s very difficult to say why one buys art, but I think people are attracted to my work because it is both familiar and ephemeral; the work contains dreamy abstractions with patterns that are present in nature, and so, in us. It goes back to interconnectedness. Artist Chris Ware says “there is no greater art on planet Earth than the planet itself.” I take Ware’s idea literally as I forage for plants and mushrooms and use them to make art in order to be part of, rather than separate from, my environment. The intention of my work is for others to feel the same.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

I believe creativity is part of being human and is often about problem-solving; I’d love it if everyone was encouraged to develop their creativity. Imagine that. For me, even as the act of art-making is solitary, it helps me integrate physical, emotional, and intellectual aspects of myself with the natural world, and also with people who see and experience the work. Those connections help me understand my place within the various ecosystems in which I find myself. I think it’s fair to say that being an artist grounds me.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

It’s true that the past shapes the present, life moves steadily forward, and youthful idealism naturally gives way to the practical realities of life at this time and in this place; but it’s complicated. The living cycles of plants and trees have shaped my understanding of how ideas exist within me. I now think that as ideas emerge, some strong or some weak, they’re sometimes nourished or neglected. But they always change; they recede, decompose, and perhaps meld with other ideas, to re-emerge. An idea’s DNA stays the same, even as its tangents of new growth are unique; as they cycle, ideas, feelings, and experiences manifest distinct from, but connected to, their original form. Here’s how it happened for me:
During the 1980’s, I was an aspiring fine-art photographer. I created black and white pictures and worked as a photographer’s assistant in New York until I understood that I lacked the chutzpah needed to succeed in that setting. I loved image making, but struggled to make a living, so turned to my degree in English, and became a teacher. For a few years I continued to make pictures, but the demands of teaching, and then parenting, required my creative energy, which I happily gave. I thought of myself as creative, but no longer as an artist.
Until the fall of 2015 when I made a spore print with mushrooms cultivated in my yard, and it lit up the DNA that lingered from my time as a young artist. I recognized the ability to connect ideas, emotions, and experiences with image-making. It was familiar. The spore print imagery, and the process itself, made sense to me. So, I went with it.      

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.sporeplay.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_sporeplay/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/madge-evers-artist/

Image Credits
Jill Kaufman & NEPM @thefestiveanthropologist