Alexis Williams, Ontario, Canada
Director of the Biophilium

 I'm a Canadian research artist interested in paradigm shifts in culture related to ecology. I have a love for biology and natural philosophy and I raise giant silk moths. I'm a long time amateur mycologist and travel the world in search of wild mushrooms, witches’ markets, muppety birds, wild things to ferment and gates to open along wildlife corridors. My work, which often highlights the kinship of Art, Science and magic is really just an invitation for you to indulge in your geekiest interests.

Ashlee Mays, Pigeon Forge, TN
Biophilium Research Leader

As a printmaker, most of the pieces I make derive from some kind of book structure. The structure of a book is simple and its function is intuitive. While books are generally static objects, they are built to be in motion. The spine of a book demonstrates just the right amount of flexibility to allow access. The book form is a vehicle for information, information that was important enough to mechanize and disseminate. Printmaking for me has always been about a mechanism.

It is one thing to say something, it is another thing to write it down, and it is a completely different thing to carve, engrave, design, and print that same thing. My work focuses on these symbols that signify our human desires, and their motion. Their motion through both their mechanization of production, and the way they disseminate into banality. Many of my pieces move from place to place, sometimes through space and sometimes through ownership. Printmaking provides the conceptual spine that supports my interdisciplinary practice. My art pieces are almost always interactive, asking the viewer to physically place themselves in this portrait of connectivity. Nowadays we do not rely on movable type to get us our daily news. It seems that we no longer rely on the accuracy of the artist’s hand to illustrate scientific information. Printmaking mobilized the first information revolution. We are experiencing another one, and this one did not appear out of thin air. I am looking to expose the seemingly invisible lines that connect our day to day experiences with a larger mechanism. It appears to me that Botanists are sometimes doing the same thing. The parking ticket you got last week, the souvenir from your last vacation- these artifacts all have a complex history. They quietly shape an experience that you are actively participating in.

Catherine Slilaty, Montreal, QC
Biophilium Research Leader

Stemming from a desire to explore the self as an organism of flux, my work explores the lives of speculative creatures able to transform themselves to adapt to their environment. Inspired by microorganisms, plant life, and the interior structures of organic life, I use monsters and creatures as portals to access parts of ourselves which are intrinsically linked to nature: a site where curiosity, wonder, anguish, and survival instincts collide. As a queer, neurodivergent second-generation immigrant, many aspects of my identity fall into the in-between. I’ve always been drawn to the monster in all forms of media: the othered hybrid, the outcast creature unable to be anything but its unapologetic self, undeniably powerful and free, existing outside of social conventions. I found freedom and healing through the ways monsters have always tended to embrace dread and desire head-on, through radical self-making and resilience. I see these beings as vessels for Othered bodies, allowing access to catharsis by embracing transformation: an ever-evolving, fluid and full self. My current work is focused on the evolutionary jump between the inert and the living: how the organization of matter forming organic life came to be. I’m seeking to blend the latest scientific findings on these topics with a playful speculative approach through animation and drawing.

Vanessa Iafolla, Dartmouth, NS

My artistic practice explores themes of grief, death, and life post-mortem. I am trained in ethnographic research and rely upon this training in my artistic practice, which explores cultural approaches to death and memorialization, including posthumous collaboration. This aspect of my practice developed in response to the death of my younger brother, Tristan, who died in 2024, in a car accident in Utah while on vacation. I am interested in the way death and land interact through legal structures, cultural practice, and individual experiences of death and grief. I have used plants grown by my brother, who was a landscaper with particular interests in native flora and fauna, to process photographs of the Utah landscape and make anthotypes of him. I have created a series of soil chromatograms using dirt taken from the site of the car accident, his last home, and his gravesite. I am currently working on a series of salt print photographs made using salt taken from Great Salt Lake; future plans for my art practice include making environmentally-friendly gum bichromate photographs using alternatives to potassium dichromate, and to use pigments I have made from soil harvested from places identified on his road trip in Utah.

Yvonne Duck, Jersey City, NJ

My work investigates the tension between systems of containment and the autonomy of natural forms. Through sculpture, photography, and print-based processes, I examine how human-made structures impose order, restraint, and permanence, while natural bodies persist through movement, adaptation, and quiet refusal. Photography is often my starting point. Through close observation of plants, insects, wildlife, and landscapes, I am drawn to structures and relationships that are easily overlooked — roots, cellular forms, nests, fragile networks, and cycles of growth and decay. In the studio, these observations are translated into physical form, where organic and found materials meet rigid supports, fasteners, frames, and barriers. Natural forms resist full containment: they bend, emerge, fracture, reroute, and continue. Mycophilia offers an opportunity to extend this inquiry into the largely unseen world of fungi. I am particularly interested in mycelial networks, symbiosis, decomposition, and regeneration, and in how these systems might reshape my understanding of connection, resilience, and transformation. I want to explore how natural materials can be grown and cultivated as part of the art-making process, particularly as surfaces for photographic and print-based imagery. I am interested in experimenting with translucent and organic substrates onto which photographs, etchings, or other printmaking processes might be transferred, allowing the biological material and the image to become physically intertwined.

Milena Vasquez, Calgary AB

I am a Bolivian-Canadian visual artist whose practice integrates nature exploration, botanical research, and the creation of deep connections between people and the natural world.

As the daughter of renowned botanist Roberto Vásquez, I am inspired by a lifetime spent following in my father’s footsteps as an explorer, illustrator, and photographer. Searching for orchids was my way of connecting with him while he lived separately from my family. From these journeys, I learned to see nature as a sanctuary for both biological and human connection, a place of belonging.

Through Cyanotype, I create blueprints that bring my botanical archives into dialogue with my contemporary imagery and research. Using ICM (Intentional Camera Movement) photography and digital collage, I capture the unseen energy of the plants I encounter. By blending these alternative processes, I explore the materiality of memory and the interplay of light and time. My work integrates family heirlooms with organic materials gathered from forest walks, transforming this shared history into poetic meditations on ancestry, motherhood, and fi lial love.
Orchids are the central metaphor for my work, thriving through the "wisdom of decay" and interdependence. While my father’s life’s work focused on the visible beauty of orchids, I am driven to explore the invisible fungal networks that sustain them, a hidden world his research rarely touched. By moving into BioArt, I seek to expand our family legacy and bring new scientifi c perspectives back to him. My practice now aims to integrate mycology to reveal the deep biological connections that allow these species to survive and transform.

My practice also extends into community work, where I facilitate workshops and nature exploration activities. I use art and nature as portals for refl ection, curiosity, and resilience. For me, human connectivity mirrors the invisible fungal systems that support life in the forest; just as mycelium sustains the woods, our collective well-being thrives through the same care, interdependence, and renewal.

Elyse Portal, Sudbury, Ontario

I am a settler in Canada of Ukrainian, Baltic, Mennonite and Irish heritage. My work revolves around climate crisis endurance exercises that respond to climate uncertainty, land-use changes, and biodiversity loss with sensual research, ecological materials, reciprocal pigment foraging, other-than-human invitations, climate narratives, and socially-engaged ecoart practices. Living within the territory of the Atikameksheng Anishnawbek in N'Swakamok (Sudbury, Ontario), I recognize that colonialism and mining interests led to the creation of the Robinson Huron Treaty of 1850. Mining impacts directly effect the context in which I work, including the tensions among fallout of historical nickel smelter pollution, heavy metal levels, mass tailings ponds, as well as an immense community-engaged regreening project remediating the land through the re-alkalizing and planting of 10 million trees, described in my personal and collective work as part of ee portal.

I have been part of the collaborative ee portal since 2011. Our work mnemonic for the commons, initiated at the Burren College of Art - one of the longest-standing art and ecology programs in Ireland, continues to influence our practice, including the book art series we are currently developing with flask publishing.

My current projects are soil colour carbon sink, bog-moss-lettuce, and sounds are pigments are places, funded by the Canada Council for the Arts and Ontario Arts Council.

Gideon Hermann, Edinboro PA

Gideon Hermann is a jeweler and metalsmith currently located in northwestern Pennsylvania. They are pursuing a Master of Fine Arts degree at Pennsylvania Western University, Edinboro. They received their Bachelor of Fine Arts with a focus in Jewelry and Metalsmithing and a Digital Fabrication and Design Certificate at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in May 2021.

Their work examines post-industrial landscapes, particularly those of the Rust Belt, and the evolving relationship between industry, ecology, and time. They are drawn to places where natural processes reclaim abandoned structures: rust and rot creep in, plants emerge through concrete, and buildings slowly collapse back into the environments they once dominated. Rust is central to this work, acting as both a material and metaphor for decay, memory, and nature’s persistent reclamation.

Gideon works with mild steel, using rust as a collaborator rather than fighting against it. In their series of “Temporary” brooches, they expose steel to the elements and periodically paint them, mirroring the futile attempt to halt rust on urban infrastructure using paint. The steel continues to corrode beneath each layer, causing the paint to crack and flake. Over time, these layers form an archive of the struggle between preservation and inevitable decay. In this series, Gideon periodically documents the work to create a photographic archive of each brooch’s decay over time.

Ecology is another conceptual anchor for their work. To them, post-industrial sites hold both harm and hope. These sites bear the scars of extraction, yet plants emerge that remediate soil, water, and atmosphere. Gideon explores plants as agents of healing and interdependence, enabling us to imagine futures where human and non-human beings thrive together.

Jewelry, as a format, allows these ideas to unfold at the scale of the body. Its intimacy encourages the viewer to look closely. By miniaturizing industrial forms and elevating overlooked organisms, they create opportunities for slow observation and renewed connection. This work sits at the intersection of geometry and chance, industry and ecology, decay and regeneration. Through metalsmithing, they aim to cultivate empathy, attention, and a deeper understanding of the living systems that persist within and beyond post-industrial landscapes.

Kim Noce

Kim  is an artist, filmmaker, animator and educator whose practice explores animation as an ecological, material and participatory process. Her ongoing research, Animated Environmental Rituals, investigates relationships between animation, ecology, ritual and place through fieldwork and artistic research in Mongolia, Indonesia, UK, Portugal and China.

In Mongolia, she developed Animated Environmental Rituals: Light of the Heart’s Home during a residency at the Erdenesiin Khuree Mongolian Calligraphy & Art Center. The project brought together movement, Mongolian calligraphy, ecological materials and immersive installation. Her recent research in Indonesia explores batik animation through natural dyes , inspired by the work of “bring back the light” a conservation project exploring the life cycle, movement and synchronisation of fireflies. Across Mongolia, Indonesia and China, her work considers how local ecological knowledge, traditional practices and relationships with landscape can inform new approaches to animation.

Kim is particularly interested in how animation can move beyond representing nature and become a process of attention, exchange and ecological interdependence. Through the Mycophilia programme, she hopes to deepen her understanding of fungi, mycelial networks, symbiosis and regeneration, and explore how these systems might inform future Animated Environmental Rituals.

Dominica Harrison, UK

Dominica Harrison is an animation director, visual artist and educator whose practice combines experimental animation with printmaking, illustration and installation. Her work explores interspecies communication, ecological consciousness and the capacity of animation to express more-than-human perspectives. She is particularly interested in how movement, material transformation and speculative storytelling can challenge anthropocentric ways of understanding the living world.

Her ongoing collaborative project, Anima Mundi, brings together international artists to investigate relationships between humans, plants, animals and altered states of consciousness. Its first instalment, In the Garden: Giggles in the Greenery, explored entheogenic plants through a risograph publication and animated film. Her current short film, Re-Mind, draws on ethnobotany, panpsychism and alchemical thought to consider humanity’s search for spiritual meaning from the perspective of a more-than-human consciousness.

Harrison’s practice-led research combines artistic experimentation with interdisciplinary reading, collaboration and embodied encounters with environments and materials. She works across digital and analogue processes, including risograph and intaglio printmaking, allowing texture, repetition and material unpredictability to participate in the development of each work. Through the Biophilium programme, she hopes to deepen her scientific understanding of ecological systems and develop more informed approaches to representing non-human agency, movement and interdependence through animation.

Deanna Pindell, Chimacum, Washington

Deanna Pindell focuses on forest and water quality issues through sculpture, installation, and public art. She explores the complexity of these concerns and proposes functional, remediative solutions when possible.​ As a citizen scientist and community-engaged artist, she has worked with climate scientists, marine biologists, water-quality chemists, soils scientists and a variety of community stakeholders.

Pindell also teaches art and gives presentations on ecoart history, practitioners, and potentials. Her background includes curation, gallerist, boardmember, theatrical scenic artist and set-builder, performer, producer ... a wide range of experiences as befits a lifetime working artist.

Deanna lives with critters and conifers in rural Washington. 

Lorenz Wiedemann, Munich, Germany

My name is Lorenz Wiedemann and I am a digital artist and 3D Designer from Munich Germany. I recently discovered mycelium and have become deeply fascinated by its potential.  Together with a friend from the Buinho FabLab in Portugal, and its founder Carlos Alcobia, I am planning a joint venture to explore the possibilities of mycelium-based composites (MBCs).

At our family farm in Bavaria I have set up in the last months my own small Bio Lab with a laminar flow hood a pressure cooker. At the moment I am growing on different substrates: Reishi, Cordyceps, Lions Mane, Shiitake and different varieties of Oyster mushrooms.

My professional focus lies in 3D design, computer generated imagery, and visual effects. As an artist, I have been part of the art collective Goat Solutions since 1999, where we have been exploring the subject of the goat as an artistic theme for more than 25 years.