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Mysterious Forest Life

While exploring wildlife trails in the boreal forest, I have been serendipitously delighted by pop-up exhibits of wildly-diverse, intriguing, intricate structures and designs – some look delicate and fragile, some fleshy, some brightly coloured, some just downright weird. Many of these miniature pieces of furniture and decor in my imaginary fairy garden I have only seen once, and I would have missed the fairy’s bathtub altogether if it weren’t for our daughter, Jessie, my best mushroom scout. I have since become aware that the “permanent art installation” of the Mother Earth Gallery that creates these pop-up shows is a living, waste decomposing, soil-producing, life-giving, plant sustaining kingdom below ground! 

~Sharon Krushel 

Centred in the forest life of the Peace Country in Northwestern Alberta, the 24 photographs in Mysterious Forest Life embody three types of life forms: fungi, lichen and moss. As each striking image presents us with a new species, the viewer is taken on an exploratory tour of the forest. You will find seven different types of fungi displayed in this exhibition, but there are actually over 1.5 million species of fungi (6 times more than plants) and about 20,000 of them produce mushrooms. In the Mother Earth Boreal Beauty of the Peace Country book, included in this exhibition, you will learn that lichen is not actually a plant, it’s not a moss, it’s a relationship. Also presenting a close up, sensory view of moss in spruce bogs and fens, you will see sphagnum moss photosynthesizing under water, creating bubbles of oxygen.   

Each photo the artist has captured gives us a whimsical and mysterious angle, as if we are transported to a new level, a level at which an insect would see the forest life. The intimacy of the photos is a deliberate action by which we see up close the delicacy and vulnerability, the beauty and resilience of nature. Krushel’s photos broaden the viewer’s awareness of what is created in nature and how we co-exist with it every day. They might even spark inspiration for the next time you are out for a stroll in nature, to stop, take note of what you are walking on or around, and crouch down to take in the detailed beauty that is Mother Earth.  



Featured Image: Sharon Krushel, Fly Agric, Photograph, Collection of the artist

 

Featured Artist

Sharon E. Krushel, Peace River, Alberta

Sharon is a musician, musical theatre performer, storyteller, photographer, and the author of MOTHER EARTH: Boreal Beauty of the Peace Country, with Flora, Fauna, & Fungi ID, including Latin, French, Beaver, and Cree. 

She has been hiking in the Peace River hills since 1983, often with her husband, Terry, her two children, Jessie, and Denver, and their beloved canine companions. She delights in finding pieces of light to photograph in the forest, and her passion is to share the wonder.

In addition to boots-on-the-ground photography, she loves to go putzing about the Peace in her husband’s home-built aircraft to capture a bird’s eye view of everything from the abstract art designs of the wetlands (p.30) to the rivers that flow into the Mighty Peace on its northward journey.

Sharon delights in collaboration and has been designing greeting cards since 2012, featuring her own images as well as those of other northern artists (DonaBonaCards.com).

Her pandemic project, the Mother Earth book, sprouted wings and took 31 fellow photographers on board. Beyond the 1st and 2nd printings, the Mother Earth project has taken on a life of its own with travelling exhibits, guided hikes, Mother Earth presentations in schools, galleries and libraries, music videos, and live-music slideshows.

Sharon’s favourite new word is BIOPHILIA – a deep desire to connect with other species of living things. This may inspire her to lie on her belly on the edge of a black spruce bog to photograph Big Red Stem moss through a macro lens, or to refrain from photography so she can be lost in the magic of staring into the curious eyes of a Canada Lynx for seven seconds before it shyly retreats from the path.

Creating the Mother Earth book has greatly nurtured Sharon’s biophilia. 

“When I learn the name of a mushroom or an intriguing species of moss or lichen, 

I feel like I’ve made a new friend.”

To ensure accuracy of species identification, as well as information and stories, Sharon consulted with wildlife specialists, the Alberta Native Plant Council, the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute, Ken Dies (a fungi and butterfly expert in Fairview), and Melanie Bird (peatland specialist at the NAIT Centre for Boreal Research).

To honour the Beaver people as the first to name the species in the Peace Country, Sharon met with indigenous language speakers at Beaver First Nation near High Level and was invited to attend their Culture Camp the following summer to learn more of their ways and words. 

Charlene Noskey helped with the inclusion of Woodland Cree names, together with her sisters from Loon River, Evelyn and Nancy, who helped create the Cree Language app, KTCEA Elders Speak. 

Sharon contacted her children’s former French Immersion teacher, Linda Labbe, to help add the species’ names en français. 

You can find Sharon’s Artist Statement for the Mother Earth book on page 84, alongside a photo of her favourite flower, Pulsatilla nuttalliana.



Activities

Mysterious Forest Life FInal V2 Reduced

Exhibition Guide

Funded by

TREX Northwest Program Sponsor