Jillian Sico
Mycorrhizae

Media: Letterpress, handmade paper, thread, bookcloth
Size: 10.75" x 5.8" x .75"
$700

Artist Statement:
Mycorrhizae explores connectivity and loss from a personal and ecological perspective through an examination of mycorrhizal fungi. Mycorrhizae are necessary symbiotic associations between fungi and plant roots. Mycorrhizal fungi uptake and distribute essential nutrients to plants, store carbon in the soil, and help communicate information among and between plant species.

Research for this project took place in the Cohutta Wilderness and Wildlife Management Area in the mountains of North Georgia, marking a moment in time in an era of change. North Georgia was logged extensively from the 1880s through the 1950s, leaving only 2% of its original old-growth forest. In October 2016, the catastrophic Rough Ridge wildfire burned almost 28,000 acres in the Cohutta Wilderness. Other disruptions, such as disease and invasive pests, continue to alter the forest landscape, including the hidden, underground landscape that sustains it. I knew that I was documenting only a moment in time: this place as I knew and remembered it would one day be gone. But although we may lose something as we know it, we can adjust and form new connections while still earnestly mourning the loss of what was.

I used papermaking as a performative medium to tie the book materially to a specific, transitory place and time. The sound and texture of the finished paper, along with reflective text and images, recreate for the reader the experience of genuine connection with the forest. I formed sheets from linen fibers that I buried at the base of a tulip poplar tree in the Cohutta. After two months underground, the linen had started to rett and change form and was covered in white mycelium, fine roots, insects, and worms. To evoke a mood of loss and transition, I drew organic patterns in a deckle box with linen pulp pigmented with charcoal harvested from the same tree. I harvested local Alabama kozo and created watermarks based on images of mycelium I saw in soil samples under a microscope. For the pamphlet book, I scanned tree roots and poured jugs of mycorrhizal mushroom spores into recycled paper pulp. The final piece contains bits of fungi and spores that may one day begin to consume the book itself, completing the cycle.

Mycorrhizae, an edition of 22, is a collaboration that includes a personal, reflective text by the author and an accompanying informational text by ecologist Katie Beidler. The collaboration highlights both the personal, specific and scientific, universal aspects of mycorrhizal connections in an ever-changing forest ecosystem. Both books were printed on a Vandercook #4 press in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Type and images are from photopolymer plates and the typeface is Baskerville. The forest scene is printed from wood veneer.

Biography

Jillian Sico (she/her/hers) is a book artist and papermaker living in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. She received her MFA in Book Arts from The University of Alabama in 2020 and her MA in Anthropology from the University of Georgia in 2013. Jillian’s work has been exhibited nationally and is held in six special collections, including Emory University and the University of Miami.

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