International Fungi & Fibre Newsletter 2019 ~ Liza Johansson
This year I have taught about eatable mushrooms and I also talk about fungi for dye at a folk high school in Sweden. There was a group of young girls who became very interested in pigment from mushrooms when I showed that you can dye yarn and paint with the pigments. These girls would start a group and want to dye together and they started immediately the same day! They had never before heard of using mushrooms in this way! I have also had a mushroom exhibition in another place of Sweden where I have shown eatable mushrooms, poison mushrooms but also what fungi you can dye with and use for pigment for painting. Many became interested and had many questions about this. The interest is great when you start talking about it. In recent years, I myself have become interested in counting in wood. My next challenge is to use fungal pigments on wood. This is certainly interesting for many craftsmen.
I have been experimenting with some and hopefully I can share this during the symposium. Now I´ve started to translate my book ”Pigment and Paper from Fungi” to English and hope to have it for the next symposium 2020!
best wishes, Liza
Newsletter #2 from SWEDEN – 2012 ~ by Liza Johannson
There are many people interested in colours from fungi and we are all spread in our long country. Most live in the north, near Hjördis Lundmark. When I talked to her, she said she is working hard together with others doing courses, lectures, exhibitions and teaching. She is also marketing the book with Hans Marklund and is so happy because the interest of fungi colours is increasing. So the book is selling well here and in other countries.
In the rest of the country we meet in a small group or work by ourselves at home. I have seen some work on the internet and Facebook and I send some pictures from my own working days.
For myself I work with my paintings using fungi colour and go to a course in school with woolworks, mostly felting. The course is distance learning with meetings 6 time a year. My biggest interest in this course is to learn more applications for fungi colour. It is very nice for felting products. I also sometime teach children in school (7-11 years old) to make fungi paper and later use it for collage. I also teach the children about fungi and then let them paint a picture of fungi in aquarell. The interest for fungi paper is also increasing a little.
Hope to see you all in Spain, Greetings Liza Johannsen
NewsLetter #1 from SWEDEN , by Liza Johanssen ~ 2011
I work with a project in school, I show many things from the mushroom world and have workshops with paper and pigments. Later I also going to work together with the textile teacher, with mushroom dyeing and felting. At home I experiment with wool, felting, dyeing as usual and I paint pictures with mushroom pigment.
I also go on school for learning more about wool and felting. I have sent 2 images of my pictures painted with mushroom pigment.
