Understorey

In this print I have used litho printed chine collé alongside drypoint etching. This is made from two plates with different views of the same image. My aim here is to give a sense of movement, or a trace of what has been, but the result is almost abstract, losing definition. This represents mutualism between fungi and plants.

The title of this print comes from a chapter from Underland by Robert Macfarlane in conversation with Merlin Sheldrake. The understory is where the wood wide web can be found, beneath the tree canopy and the forest floor. And so much more: fungi, lichen, saplings.

What interests me most,” says Merlin, “is the understory’s understory.” He points around at the beech, the hornbeam, the chestnut. “All of these trees and bushes,” he says, “are connected with one another belowground in ways we not only cannot see, but ways we have scarcely begun to understand.

You can read this chapter online in Emergence Magazine here.

This body of work is a series of original art prints based on the book by Suzanne Simard, Finding the Mother Tree. Trees communicate via mycorrhizal fungi to trade water and other nutrients. Ancient and mature trees nurture their offspring via these networks, as well as trading nutrients between other species. Botanist Simard has spent years working on this theory as part of a wider body of work, discovering what it means for forests, the climate and the wider Anthropocene.