Clizia Mordaei and I connected online one spring day in April and much to our surprise we learned our shared connections to the Pacific Northwest. Clizia is from Italy and during high school she studied abroad with an American family in Newport, OR! She was planning a summer visit and we arranged for her to come up to my studio for the day.

Clizia is working on her thesis for her PhD at Iuav University of Venice in Italy which focuses on the role of fungi for fashion and the analysis of the role of fungi towards a sustainable transition, by considering them not only in their materiality, but also in the ontological and philosophical shift they may trigger with the bodies and design practices. 

Spending a day in the studio provided her the opportunity for some field research for a case study to include in her thesis. We were incredibly lucky because we had an early August flush of Boletus edulis (porcini) in the high alpine. On one of my hikes I was able to forage a bunch of blown out porcinis which are perfect for dyeing and perfect for a visiting Italian given their love of this delicious edible mushroom. We were able to work with the dyes and pigments from the porcini as well as get into my stash of mushroom paint, making a beautiful sampling for Clizia to take home with her back to Italy.