Ruth Frances Greenberg!

Our first full try: from river clay to tea bowls.
Thanks to the generous Ruth Frances Greenberg’s vast talents and tools.

 

I think we found our myco pal!!!!
Normal enough — when wearing plaid.
Sampan Super Chai‘s new friend, Jon Salmon of Mycosense Mushrooms, a PDX-based start up and supplier of kits and spawn inoculants “with the goal of enabling individuals to grow their own choice edible mushrooms right in their own homes starting with our Miraculous Growing Kits. For the adventurous mushroom enthusiast we’ve assembled an assortment of mushroom cultures and growing supplies that build on the do it yourself ethos we are so proud of here in the Pacific Northwest.”

I’d been searching for someone who would understand the (subterranean) landscape of growing mycelium materials, and would be up for working with us in a more scientific capacity than I possess (putting it mildly; I’m a haven for contaminants).  I posted a “collaborator wanted” listing on a variety of local and national sites, and perhaps it’s true that you need to be on the ground with the equivalent of a local phone book and a local mindset; some mycological Kismet helps too.

Next step: assemble equipment, get spawn, substrate and a more detailed protocol for pasteurizing, spawn selection, labeling, documentation, work flow, time frame.

TLAAG and I will be working at the White Stag Summer Residency by the Burnside Bridge through August…

 

Ruth Greenberg generously took Sara’s and my (stupidly, virtuous, instructive, intimate) hard labor of crushing, prepping and wedging the clay… and made cups. It’s magic.

These aren’t fired yet… mind…

 

 

Was lucky to go foraging with Eric Lyon of Oregon Black Truffles on Larch Mountain for native forest chai ingredients, and Becky Lerner of First Ways at the Sandy Delta, for nettles to make pesto :

The double-fisted King Bolete is not from today; it’s part of Eric Lyon’s haul from last week. There’s Eric Lyon, by the clear cut. Beyond the clear cut is forest. We found Wild Ginger (Asarum canadense) and later, Vanilla leaf (Achlys triphylla ) and Licorice fern (Polypodium glycyrrhiza).

Clouds and sun today at the Sandy River Delta, confluence with the Columbia (where so many rivers flow, mighty, mighty). Sara Huston of TLAAG and I learned about uses for St John’s Wort, Elderberry, Cottonwood, Mullein, Plantain, Yarrow, Oregon grape (most delicious), Teasel, and we harvested nettles.

Back at Tiny Home I washed the nettles and bagged them for Monday; and dehydrated the Vanilla leaf. My house smells incredible.

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Such mounds of dead biomass, like walking on a velvet mattress.

Digging for wild ginger in the ground, and the licorice ferns through the mossy mats of Giant maple trees;  sticking fingers into a body of earth and pine litter (one horizontal, one vertical –  as the ferns are epiphytes); feeling one’s way with eyes closed along  the roots; then pulling gently away. Delicious, strange, quiet.

Sara Huston of TLAAG is back.

Together we processed over 40lbs of clay – crushed, mixed the river clay with 20% ball clay, wetted, and wedged.

 

…and I need to pay tribute to my temporary roommate at NDOI, Miriam. She’s a very self-possessed, human-agnostic, cuddly comedian.

I’m in PDX this month in residence at an awesome tiny home, through Ann Chen’s good graces and her project NDOI (Nomadic Dept of the Interior); Ann also cofounded Phats Valley Residency in Cape Cod. This house is a handmade cabin, in the middle of NE PDX. Its chief resident is a cat named Miriam.

I’m spending the rest of June setting up things for July-August.
At that time, I hope we’ll be testing designs, doing some public events (including food, drinks, walks, kayaking and talks), growing mycelium to test forms and density, and getting the clay cup and tea plan organized.

I’m still looking for a cube-truck sized piece of riverside land to do this all on, just a 2 month loan….

 

1. Carrying a dirty shovel on public buses and into Safeway is a great conversation starter, ranging from toxic clay to Brooklyn weaponry to “Are you alright?”

2-11. Dug 40 lbs of clay up by Linnton, with PNCA MFA CD colleagues Alicia Navarette and Emilie Skytta (thanks Alicia for documenting!!!). Finding the site required some remembering, but it’s a nice exposed bank of relatively elastic clay, and clean of debris and vegetation.

12,13. I  broke it up into small pieces to dry out in the PNCA Ceramics studio. I’ll condition it next week.

14. A bowl made of mycelium from ecovative. Made by TLAAG, my Sampan Super Chai design partners.

15. Pea flowers (edible) that I am freezing. Planning a big dinner end of the month at Cyril’s PDX, with their chef Marie Mourou, and the generosity of proprietors Sasha and Michael, who run in tandem Clay Pigeon Winery. They — and their output/progeny/love fare — are delicious.

 

 

This is a recording from Linnton today, on the way to the clay banks on the Willamette. We walked from the train tracks where we parked the car, past a foul former something (electric grid hub, cleaning pools?), past some young-looking wetlands scrub, and past the landmark radio towers. Huge beasties, with delicate birdsong all around.

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Other things that happened:
Oliver Kellhammer and I skype-planned some public engagement actions for late July. He’ll be coming from work with Kathy High in Troy, doing brownfields work with NATURE lab. Ethnoecologist Kimberlee Chambers will be joining us in thinking through food. Consider: nature walks, specimen collection, umwelts, picnics, kayaks, bioremediation superstars, design charrettes.

Here are some titles:

Otter (or Osprey) Umwelt
The Jacob von Uexküll Memorial Picnic Kayak
With Oliver Kellhammer and Kimberlee Chambers

The Mighty Mouse Botanical Scavenger Hunt
in the Willamette Cove
with Oliver Kellhammer

Working with Non Human Helpers
Design charrette on using remediating materials in Sampan Super Chai

More to come on this soon.

 

 

Been busy working on a few aspects of SS Chai. For one thing, with TLAAG as design partners, we have a design proposal.  If anyone is interested in reading… we’ve created a long proposal as well as an “executive summary.”
Here’s a really topical overview:

Sampan Super Chai is a prototype for a floating art/science platform that addresses both local and global concerns of climate, citizenship, and the ecosystem. It drifts from downtown Portland to the Columbia as a tethered cluster of floating modules. Participants investigate the rivers’ tangled relations, becoming familiar with the comprehensive, “dark ecology” of the present.

Sampan Super Chai provides hands on encounters with the river in three structured ways:

Process: Using the river to produce and drink tea together, as a hands-on encounter and convivial activity
Observe: Empirical citizen science, in both short and medium length encounters
Imagine: Placing the present within the larger ecosystem context, and a span of Deep Time

TEA: Central to the public-facing aspect of Sampan Super Chai is the process of making and drinking chai: cleaning water from the river, making clay cups from its banks, and infusing herbs from the shoreline, while using black tea transported from across the Pacific.

MATERIALS: Modular structures incorporate plastic flotsam from the Pacific. As counterpoint, the floating rafts and buoys are made from mushroom mycelium (fungal threads). Mycelium material is molded to replace Styrofoam in building and packaging materials.

 

Here are a couple of  facets of the project:

BUOYS.

Buoy grown from Ecovative’s GIY pre-inoculated mycelium + substrate mix

I’ve started a work group with my ITP colleague Eric Rosenthal and 4 students – Erika Miller, Ken Amarit, Kina Smith and Laura Juo-Hsin Chen – on a prototype of the “data buoys.” These will light up the project at night, in a magic  act of dematerialization:)

We’ve taken apart garden lights and are using a combination of solar cell, battery, and bright LED light. I am currently prototyping a buoy made of mycelium, which would grow around a plastic water bottle, which would be weighted at the bottom, and contain all the electrical components at the top. This way the buoy contains all the elements we’re talking about – plastic waste, petroleum, renewable energy, and mycelium / ag waste material. I think we can make the buoys out of a sawdust-eating mushroom, if we want to get Northwest with the project. Or Willamette Valley ag waste would be great too.

 

CLAY.

Masters candidate Talya Stein has been working with the clay I brought back, at NYU Steinhardt’s Ceramics Dept. under the tutelage of the Chair, Judy Schwartz and the Kiln Master, Shida Kuo,

These slabs each represent a mix of the hand-dug Willamette R clay amended with mined ball clay, from 10% – 50% amendment.

Here is the break down from Talya:

 

1. Dry the clay and break it up to little pieces.

2. Make powder out of the clay.

3.Add water gradually and mix.

4. Let the clay dry a little.

5. Make a lump out of the clay

6. Measure precise amount of the clay and the Ball clay.

10% increments. (10% = 5g)

7. Make sure not to mix anything up! 10% Ball clay, 90% Mud = 5g Ball clay, 45g Mud…

8. Wedge balls together.

9. Make Tile tests (Making them look like little tomb stones is optional).

These were bisque fired at Cone 6.

 

 

 

The 9:1 ratio held up as a slab, so we thought we could try 100% river clay, now that we understood how to process the clay correctly (completely dry and pulverize, weigh, add water slowly, wedge long and well).This had similar issues to my tests in Portland- cracking, falling apart, not enough elasticity.

 

Next step was trying the 9:1 river/ball clay mix as cups:

These are getting fired on Friday.

 

Next steps get a little confusing to me.
Judy Schwartz, Chair of Ceramics at Steinhardt, had this exchange with Talya:

 

Future steps:

1. Test the water absorbent of the clay

If the clay is fired to a higher temperature, the clay can become vitrified..meaning the clay becomes almost like a glaze and is not absorbent of moisture. The lower the fire  or heat, the more porous the clay. That is why flowerpots are such good vessels for plants because water evaporates easily through the pores of the clay. We can run a sample of the 100% mud clay as you call it, in the high fire kiln and see if it melts….when it gets this hot….2300 F… this clay would probably melt and be totally non porous. The next high fire will be next week or email Shida and he will put the sample in the kiln to see if it melts or if not you will see how there is no porosity. Make a sample at home and bring it in to put into that kiln but put it inside a high fire clay bowl in case it melts out flat.

2. Glaze–

for low fire ..yes, that is fine.

3. Test if the water gets toxic

I guess  you mean from a glazed sample cup?

If  you want to test toxicity of the clay I guess you would take it to a lab before and after firing.

4. Test the breakabilaty  of the mugs

I do not know a test for this….

but what do you want to accomplish knowing how much pressure it takes?

Does this make sense? Do u think we should be doing anything else?

5. I tried to explain to Marina what you told me about taking out the iron from the clay.

Your mud clay looks like a standard clay found around river beds…containing a fair amount of iron oxide making the clay fire red… it is called an earthenware clay.

We use earthenware in the studio too, but I use a refined earthenware paying extra to have the iron oxide removed so that the students have a cleaner body to glaze on. When you mixed yours with mine, you can see how the clay got lighter and lighter because there was less a percentage of Iron Oxide in the clay body.