Symbiocene Era 2025: Mycelium, Soils and Roots
Bushel Collective
106 Main Street, Delhi NY
Oct 25-Dec 7, 2025
Bushel is pleased to present “Symbiocene Era: Mycelium, Soils and Roots,” a group exhibition that explores diverse approaches to environmental awareness and collaborations with nature.
Guest curator Kathleen Sweeney selected 14 New York State artists: Hovey Brock, Holly Cohen, V. XS Hou, Emily Johnston, Robin Kahn, Mary McFerran, Pareesa Pourian, Jenna Spevack, Mina Teslaru, Roberta Trentin, Monte Wilson, Farah Marie Velten, Dion Yannatos, and Jim Zivic. Each artist—as solutionist, ecoartivist, and changemaker—is developing creative practices that expand what it means to be a responsible creator. Their varied practices include innovative material reuse, mindful ecological sourcing of mineral and plant pigments, and limiting use of petrochemicals, plastic, acrylics, and fossil-fuel-originating paints and solvents. Works in the exhibition include mushroom-paper sculpture, drawings made with slime mold, and watercolors derived from reclaimed bricks. These artists are also co-creating systems of intersecting, interspecies communities as alternatives to dystopia and despair. Most of the artists live and maintain studios in the Catskills, with a deep commitment to environmental land stewardship. Digital Catalogue for “Symbiocene Era: Mycelium, Soils and Roots,” a group exhibition that explores diverse approaches to environmental awareness and collaborations with nature.
Opening reception of “Symbiocene Era: Mycelium, Soils and Roots”, Oct 25, 2025, Bushel Collective, Delhi NY.
All photos by Christein Aromando
Symbiocene Era 2024: Artists Envision Environmental Symbiosis
Bushel Collective
106 Main Street, Delhi NY
Oct 5-Nov 3, 2024
Opening: Saturday, Oct 5, 4-7pm
Hours: Sat & Sun 12-noonThis mixed-media curatorial debut by Kathleen Sweeney features eleven innovative women artists exploring diverse pathways of collaboration with nature in their artistic output as woodland foragers, mixed media painters, storytellers, upcyclers, 3D modelers, mineral and plant pigment artisans, weavers, found-object sculptors, deep time photographers, and experimental videographers. These explorers, solutionists and innovators with a footprint in the Catskills, NY watershed include Sarah Bachinger, Susie Bellamy, Toni Brogan, Sharon Horvath, Christina Hunt Wood, Robin Kahn, Emily Johnston, Rachel Owens, Heather Phelps-Lipton, Christie Scheele, and Kathleen Sweeney.“Symbiocene” takes its root from “Symbiosis,” or ‘living together’ to co-create and envision a world of mutual respect for all living beings, beyond the human-centrism of the Anthropocene Era. The exhibition includes works by artists deeply engaged with the natural world as makers, activists and solution-makers intent on expanding their community role to share storytelling, artisanal skills and creativity in the quest for symbiotic planetary existence.
The Symbiocene Era exhibition features the work of multicultural painters, storytellers, artisans, interdisciplinary artists, found object sculptors, photographers, and videographers who inhabit the woodlands and waterways of the Catskills in New York State.
These artists, solutionists, ecoartivists and changemakers are integrating creative practices into deeply engaged environmental awareness, expanding what it means to be responsible creators. This includes questioning their own carbon footprints through creative reuse and art material sourcing while moving out of the studio into community to help co-create alternative visionary narratives beyond dystopia and despair.
The exhibition concept focuses on envisioning a world of collaboration with nature in all aspects of creative revisioning of our relationship to diversity, honoring our homeland, and expanding alliances to protect the ecosystems of the Catskills and beyond.
