Incunabula [in-kyoo-nab-yuh-luh]
2025
Materials: locally sourced discarded wood as well as deadwood, copper wire, 800 dowel pins, woodglue, soy wax, local moss, lichen, mycelium and flora.
Various dimensions.
2025
Materials: locally sourced discarded wood as well as deadwood, copper wire, 800 dowel pins, woodglue, soy wax, local moss, lichen, mycelium and flora.
Various dimensions.
INCUNABULA
noun
[in-kyoo-nab-yuh-luh]
The word "incunabula" is Latin, with a dual meaning for "swaddling clothes" or "cradle." However, it is also the word for any book printed with metal type produced by Gutenberg printing presses, until about 1500.
More broadly speaking, the word refers to a work of art or industry of an earlier period, as well as the earliest stages or first traces of anything.
It is betwixt these definitions that the work finds its place, which is why they’re constructed using primarily natural materials and traditional techniques. They imagine an alternative history—as a series of fictional artifacts from the settler-colonial period of the area—in order to likewise imagine an alternative present and future. The series of sculptures are not objects in themselves, but entities fused with local endemic plants(particularly moss, lichen and mycelium) as a collaborative endeavour. As such, they have not been installed as finished entities, but are just getting started, as they’re left in the environment to grow, expand, change and decay over time. The structures themselves are experiments in creating microbiomes and collaborating with other species that look to enhance the capabilities of those species while also protecting them, giving them both refuge and space with which to spread out from.
It is from this transition from the works’ origins as constructed microbiomes, and their eventual evolution into hybrid structures, that the project dissolves the imagined barriers between “nature” and “culture”.
noun
[in-kyoo-nab-yuh-luh]
- a book printed before 1500
- a work of art or of industry of an early period
- the earliest stages or first traces of anything.
The word "incunabula" is Latin, with a dual meaning for "swaddling clothes" or "cradle." However, it is also the word for any book printed with metal type produced by Gutenberg printing presses, until about 1500.
More broadly speaking, the word refers to a work of art or industry of an earlier period, as well as the earliest stages or first traces of anything.
It is betwixt these definitions that the work finds its place, which is why they’re constructed using primarily natural materials and traditional techniques. They imagine an alternative history—as a series of fictional artifacts from the settler-colonial period of the area—in order to likewise imagine an alternative present and future. The series of sculptures are not objects in themselves, but entities fused with local endemic plants(particularly moss, lichen and mycelium) as a collaborative endeavour. As such, they have not been installed as finished entities, but are just getting started, as they’re left in the environment to grow, expand, change and decay over time. The structures themselves are experiments in creating microbiomes and collaborating with other species that look to enhance the capabilities of those species while also protecting them, giving them both refuge and space with which to spread out from.
It is from this transition from the works’ origins as constructed microbiomes, and their eventual evolution into hybrid structures, that the project dissolves the imagined barriers between “nature” and “culture”.
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90cm x 130cm x 90cm
Aside from the largest and last Incunabula body, this one seems like it is the most open, and least inhabited by moss, lichen and mycelium, however its vertical supports are not solid beams as they appear, but are actually a series of constructed tubes which are filled with mycelium and bound together with copper wire to prevent them from splitting apart when the wood expands as its moisture content changes. Aside from this, the body has an upper and lower portion which are both heavily covered with moss and lichen. In all of these features, the work is able to house these other species and facilitate their growth throughout the materials that compose the body, as well as enabling them to spread outwards.
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100cm x 100cm x 100cm
Although appearing to be hollow, this body is surprisingly heavy as its exterior is fabricated out of crafted oak from discarded pallets, and then lined with endcuts from locally milled pine. This unusual layering of woods—with wood grains running perpendicular to each other, laminated together with wood glue, then reinforced with dowel pins—enables a variety of species of mycelium to inoculate their preferred types of wood, while also creating a structure that is durable as the wood contracts and expands with the seasons.
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The materiality and techniques used in the work is not just a matter of aesthetics, but are necessary for the functionality of the work. On one hand, the natural materials used—primarily hardwood from pallets and end-cuts from locally milled pine—enable the growth of the moss, lichen and mycelium transplanted from the decaying wood found in the surrounding environment onto the structures, thus giving them fresh sources of nutrients to consume and colonize. Beyond this, the natural techniques used in the production of the work emphasize this imagined and less destructive history whereby the environment was not seen as a resource to be plundered without consequences, but an active and dynamic partner in the creation of life, health and wellbeing—and with this alternative outlook from the past, likewise we would be in an objectively better, healthier and less destructive present, with a (likely) more optimistic future.
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90cm x 90cm x 90cm
This is the first of the bodies to be constructed, and as such is the only one without any mycelium growing in it. It is however, still colonized with a myriad of species of moss, lichen as well as vascular plants. It is constructed primarily out of oak salvaged from pallets, along with some poplar, using glue as well as dowel pins to hold it together, and treated with soy wax to protect its exterior, while its interior is left untreated to allow for easier colonization of its inhabitant species.
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90cm x 120cm x 90cm
This body is more reclusive and deceptive than the others. At first glance appears to have only moss and lichen growing inside, but actually the work has a false bottom constructed out of locally milled pine endcuts, which insulates and obscures a hidden cavity in the bottom of the work, which is filled with a mixture of sawdust from further milling the pine as well as local mycelium. Over time, the moss and lichen will grow to consume the interior upper-half of the body, while mycelium eat away and emerge from its lower half.
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Incunabula explores the potential to develop collaborative situations and relationships between the fusion of biology and craft through this series of unique wooden sculptures. Each one’s complex unnatural geometry and angles emphasizes the collaborative relationships between their construction as objects or structures, as well as their function as bodies for colonization by moss, lichen, mycelium and flora. As such, these sculptures do not exist as static public art-works, but are a series of living and evolving entities that foster dialogue between human intervention and natural processes.
These works will be left to transform organically over years, in order to foster a dynamic relationship with the local ecology and fauna, as the wood is consumed—by fungi, lichen and moss. Through this process, these other species that inhabit the bodies will periodically release spores back onto the bodies, enabling colonization and expansion from within, drastically changing the appearance of the work overtime as collaboration takes place.
These works will be left to transform organically over years, in order to foster a dynamic relationship with the local ecology and fauna, as the wood is consumed—by fungi, lichen and moss. Through this process, these other species that inhabit the bodies will periodically release spores back onto the bodies, enabling colonization and expansion from within, drastically changing the appearance of the work overtime as collaboration takes place.
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300cm x 350cm x 300cm
This is the only Incunabula body that was constructed on site, built using primarily bushcraft techniques and with minimal use of power tools. The legs of the structure are inoculated with mycelium, as well as the top of the structure, which is also growing various species of moss and lichen. This work is the largest and tallest of the bodies, for the reason that the structure itself enhances the capacity of its occupant species to grow and colonize the surrounding area, from a safe and elevated position.
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Incunabula was constructed during summer of 2025 in Breckenridge, Colorado, USA—supported by BreckCreate—for inclusion in the 2025 Breckenridge International Festival of Art (BIFA).
