Chicago ushered in the new year with a dramatic polar vortex. Winter hibernation has been a time for brewing, fermenting, and fruiting mushrooms in preparation for a new chapter of GARLIC & GREENS. G&G will be featured in an exhibit about social practice at Columbia College’s Glass Curtain Gallery in the South Loop. GARLIC & GREENS: Anxiety Garden will focus on the therapeutic properties of gardening for self-care and medicine, while also addressing the political anxieties of contemporary culture. For this exhibit G&G will highlight traditional Persian pickled garlic, oyster mushrooms from recycled waste materials, and herbal remedies you can grow in your home garden.
The pictures below show the double-pastuerization process for growing oyster mushrooms on a substrate of used books. These books represent the anxieties of the global financial crisis, including financial guides about risk management, texts authored by Chicago School economists, such as Milton Friedman and George Stigler, and books by the figureheads of neoliberalism, such as Margaret Thatcher and Deng Xiaoping.
The opening reception is February 13 from 5:30 – 8:30pm and the exhibit runs from February 10 – April 26, 2014. For more information go to: http://www.colum.edu/Student_Life/DEPS/glass-curtain-gallery/exhibitions/risk-empathy,-art-and-social-practice/index.php