August 4-27, 2022
Opening Reception Thursday, August 4, 5 – 8 pm

Cumulative Skies, Deep Soils is an ongoing collaborative project between Jen Vaughn and Erin Mallea. The project began as a performative act of attempting to listen to the vibrations of an ancient rhizomatic network of fungus located in Oregon. Commonly known as the “Honey Fungus” it is estimated to be the largest living organism by area, covering 3.5 square miles at an estimated age of 8,650 years. Jen’s act of listening turned touch into sound, while thousands of miles away Erin repeatedly transmitted Jen’s recorded sounds and images throughout the atmosphere via SSTV, a form of image transmission via radio.

Cumulative Skies, Deep Soils is a rhizomatic installation of sounds, crystallizing spills, SSTV, and stratified sculptural works formed from meteorites, debris, and mycelium. The project aims at an expanded intimacy—a move towards contact despite distance, difference, and time. It explores the ineffable: time and physical scales beyond human perception. The artists’ actions thread together accumulations of decay with moments of the living, the cosmic, and the future. Earth and sky are intertwined to generate closeness against the pace of separation between species.

Jen Vaughn is an interdisciplinary artist, her work uses a wide range of materials and processes to thread together her interests in geology, the environment, and the complexities of our cultural constructions of nature.

Jen is based in Eugene, Oregon. She is a member of Ditch Projects, Media Editor for the Center for Art Research and the Ford Family Foundation’s Critical Conversations, and an Assistant Professor of Art and Design at Western Oregon University.

Erin Mallea Is a multidisciplinary artist motivated by an attempt to better understand the spaces they inhabit. Erin explores the past and present of particular microcosms as metaphors for larger human and environmental conditions. Analytical, meandering, playful, and often public in nature, Their work manifests in a range of media including video, sculpture, photography, performance, audio, writing, and participatory projects. Erin is currently based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

April - October Hours: Friday - Sunday, 12 - 5pm

Jen Vaughn and Erin Mallea, Cumulative Skies, Deep Soils, 2022
Custom circuit board, crystallized urea, speakers, mycelium, meteorites, cement, tektite, debris, audio, SSTV (radio) transmissions, Variable dimensions.