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Crucify Your Mind
The High Road


In Loving Memory Of...

MAGNOLIA FUNERAL SERVICE
date: September 5th, 2023

It is a truly meaningful experience to create artwork on the topic of remebering  a human. Gathering insights and memories from loved ones, and doing your best to capture the essence of the recently deceased  in physical, tactile form is an honoring process. Five podium artworks were created based on five songs that were  interpreted for all funeral attendees to remember the deceased by. Our intent was to assist in the greiving process, our efforts were to create artwork that celebrates a life.

In collaboration with Sven Gessner
for Magnolia Funeral Service:
magnoliabestattungen.de

Police in Helicopter 
Photomaton

Photography copyright Sven Gessner
and Lacy Barry 2023






Fantastic Man
Mark


PRADA

KADEWE BERLIN
Art Workshop
event date: February 13-14, 2023

Custom made 2 & 3 dimensional paper flower bouquets, formed in Prada’s SS23 collection colors of delicate pinks, baby blues, smooth greys, creamy beiges, bright off-white and deep black, is a hommage to the seasons ‘paper dress’. Prada patrons were able to view my creative process, only formally held to the confines of my art studio; assembling my signature rose, lily and chrysanthemums, with a garnish of forget-me-nots adhired to textured pink and flat white card backdrops, before being spritzed with perfume essence and placed in a gift box or envelope for safe keeping.







Medium; paper 
Size: 2D artwork:A5 / 3D artwork: 20cm x 20cmx 10cm

Photography copyright Lacy Barry 2023



Mark

Mushroom Pillars

BRITZENALE
Urbane Waldgarten Britz,
Leonberger Ring 54, 12349 Berlin

opening date: August 25th, 6pm
exhibition: August 26-27, 2023

An exhibiton curated on the controversial theme of ‘Sustainibility’; I thought a lot about the words origins, rooted in natural lifecycles of growth and degredation. Meanwhile making some mockery of  the green-washed idea of exponential growth without an ability to be broken down for participation in life and death cycles.

Three large mushroom sculptures were developed out of paper remnants, sanitized recycled cardboard, organic wood, reformed plastic bottles and decorated with food colouring and bio glitter. Stuffed with mycelian seed, the purpose of these sculptures is to break down over several weeks by acting as a food source for local organisms, and a nutrient base for real edible oyster and pompom mushrooms to fruit from.

Taking place in a Food Forest (A diverse garden of edible plants that is designed to mimic symbiotic plant, animal, fungi and insect relationships found in natural ecosystems) in Britz Berlin. Curated by Britzenale 4’s topic of ‘sustainability’.

more infos here:
www.britzenale4.com















One week of degradation...


Curators Description:

Mushrooms, nature’s remarkable alchemists, inhabit and decompose discarded and unwanted materials, both organic and non-organic, transforming them into fertile soil for the next phase of their life cycle. The visible fruiting body that many associate with fungi is a vanishingly small part of these creatures. They grow in invisible, widely branching networks through earths and forests and are closely connected.

Lacy Barry creates a world that irritates and attracts through slight variance and bright colors. Questioning the notion of sustainability, the brightly coloured mushrooms sprout from the ground - adroned with biodegradable paints and glitter dust. With their colourful fruiting bodies, slimy button caps and spongy protrusions, these structures exude a beauty that mirrors the shape of the mushroom fruit. At the same time, the installation offers shadows, spaces for light, niches for nesting, surfaces for clinging and an airy space for living mycelium to grow.

As the mushrooms breathe their spores into the atmosphere, this sculptural glittering world reminds us to appreciate barely visible life systems ad acknowledge the continuous unfolding that surrounds us.


Year 2023 
Medium: Recycling plastic, paper, cardboard, organic wood, food coloring, bio glitter and bio flour.

Photography copyright Lacy Barry 2023



















Mark




Oracle Mountain

Linienverzweiger
Tuchollaplatz, 10317 Berlin

Eco/ Solarpunk Art
opening date: Oktober 21st,  2022
7pm
on exhibition until November 15th, 2022.


In a circular system, the idea of  ‘trash’ does not exist, actually in the greatest circular system, that being our vast and wondrous natural environment,waste is always nutrient for another organism.  Nothing is actually trash, but what makes it trash is its misplacement and linear use.
The modern arrangement of materials have made some landscapes into hollowed out caves, where precious minerals are mined and others into growing monsters of refuted ‘trash’ after so-called ‘use’, creating a massive imbalance within our natural landscapes and ourselves. The hyper-colored Oracle Mountain is the miniature embodiment of my own trash. Made completely out of broken things, left over materials and paint,cardboard, crafts and paper from other recycled projects. I then re-work my trash, arrange it beautifully and look back at it see her as a part of me. … a reflection of myself, an oracle of my life, and an indication that  time is not linear nor are the organisms, landscapes and materials that are within its cycle.

Year: 2022  Medium: Recycled paper, cardboard, mixed media trash

Covered in the Tagesspiegel







German:
Eröffnung  Freitag, 21. Oktober 2022, 19-22 Uhr

Ausstellung bis 15. November 2022

In einem Kreislaufsystem gibt es die Idee des "Mülls" nicht. Im größten Kreislaufsystem, nämlich unserer riesigen und wundersamen natürlichen Umwelt, ist Abfall immer Nährstoff für einen anderen Organismus.  Nichts ist eigentlich Müll, aber was ihn zu Müll macht, ist seine falsche Platzierung und lineare Nutzung.
Die moderne Organisation von Materialien hat einige Landschaften zu ausgehöhlten Höhlen gemacht, in denen wertvolle Mineralien abgebaut werden, und andere zu wachsenden Monstern aus deponiertem  "Müll" nach der so genannten "Nutzung", wodurch ein massives Ungleichgewicht in unseren natürlichen Landschaften und in uns selbst entsteht. Der hyperfarbige Oracle Mountain ist die Miniatur-Verkörperung meines eigenen Mülls. Er ist komplett aus kaputten Dingen, übrig gebliebenen Materialien und Farbe, Pappe, Bastelmaterial und Papier aus anderen Recyclingprojekten hergestellt. Dann bearbeite ich meinen Müll, arrangiere ihn schön und betrachte ihn als einen Teil von mir. ... ein Spiegelbild meiner selbst, ein Orakel meines Lebens und ein Hinweis darauf, dass die Zeit nicht linear ist, ebenso wenig wie die Organismen, Landschaften und Materialien, die sich in ihrem Kreislauf befinden.


Jahr: 2022  Medium: Recyclingpapier, Karton, gemischter Medienmüll





Mark

The Exploration of Inhabiting a Living Home

Living Nature Pillars
ECOTOPIA
Eco/ Solarpunk Paper Light Art
date: May 2022


If we look at our architecture from the perspective of preservation, we understand our cities are actually places of prolonged pre-decomposition of materials.  Clearly we are not following the natural laws of nature and perhaps realize how we build structures largely contribute to our current global climate state, mental and physical wellbeing and general societal discourse. We also can understand the opposite is true and that inhabiting living, self-sustaining dwellings are also possible. Working with nature as a collaborative partner can provide symbiotic benefits beyond shelter, it can be a source food, water and wellbeing. An example comes to mind of the living root bridges of Cherrapunji. Bridge systems that guide the living roots of the rubber tree to create bridge systems that have survived for over a millennia. Developed by the matriarchal tribes of Southern Meghalaya, this example shows a natural infrastructure that lovingly maintains itself even after the original humans are gone. Maintenance is minimal and brings humans ever closer to the biological wonder that is our natural environment… a relationship we have largely set ourselves apart from.















With this ‘Living Home’ I am personally discovering and exploring aspects of a natural living home not just as a dwelling but a source of food and plant cultivation, water and resource recycling, a place of physical, mental and spiritual well-being, a community with other humans, animals and nature.

Apart of Ecotopia, a group show exhibting eco-utopian and dystopian ideas for the future.
When I was a child, I made the observation to my mother ' Mum, the walls are dead'. Much later in my life, I began to explore what this statement meant to me then and now as an adult. Even at the tender age of five years old, I understood the walls around me were no longer living rather materials taken from living matter connected to this earth and maintained in a sort of ‘purgatory’ state from decomposition. These dwellings, maintained by humans and the system humans are living in are preserved in a post-living state by paints, chemicals and artificially created substances that fend off the elements and rugged insects and animals that are meant to break it down and build borrows in these deceased materials. Much like living in the hollowed out carcass of an embalmed body, our homes eventually fall into decomposition when we are no longer present to preserve them. This is the natural state of life, no longer living things must break down and be turned into proteins and energy for the next generation of life to begin. The natural lifecycle of, specifically trees is clearly stated in the book ' The Hidden Life of Trees' by author and forester Peter Wohlleben.


Mark


Lacy Barry 2019