2024 has been a fun year of collaboration between Enter Gallery and award-winning contemporary artist, Jana Nicole – an artist renowned for her exploration of the mystical world of mushrooms, moss and mycelium.
Back in March, we hosted Jana Nicole’s solo show, Botanical Scapes, at which she launched a new collection of visually-spectacular 3D collages.
To complement the show, we also hosted All Things Fungi at Enter Gallery. This amazing event was curated by Jana Nicole and produced in conjunction with her festival All Things Fungi, which is the UK’s first weekend Arts and Educational camping festival centred entirely around fungi. This event brought together leading experts for an insightful evening of discussion.
Now, we’re delighted to announce that Jana Nicole has kindly designed a new postcard for Enter Gallery, which will raise funds for environmental charity, Connecting the Roots.
In today’s blog, we’re chatting to Jana Nicole to discover more about her artwork, why she is supporting Connecting the Roots, and the vital role that fungi plays in rewilding our precious planet.
Magic Ingredient
Jana Nicole is known for beautifully-crafted, hand-embellished collages that showcase the extraordinary fungi that connects our natural world.
While her collages are undeniably a thing of beauty, they also honour the intelligence of these networks, and the power they wield in the fight against climate change. Jana Nicole explains:
“People think that rewilding is all about planting trees, but the ground and the soil also have an important part to play. The first five inches of top ground soil are so important and we’ve been slowly taking that away by over-farming land. Without the mycelium networks, you don’t have that healthy soil that helps things to grow.”
Fertile Ground
Each Jana Nicole collage, like the one featured on her new postcard, showcases the most important layers of this fascinating eco-system, capturing the hidden worlds of Mycelium below ground and, mushroom and fungi above ground. Jana Nicole explains:
“I want to hit those three all-important levels. As much as it’s beautiful to see what’s above ground, it’s also important to think about what’s at ground level and below ground, because all of it is working together.”
“It all has meaning. There’s a masculine and feminine side to what I depict. There is the balance of the yin and the yang, above and below ground, the light and the darkness, and then there’s the human side of it, which is the middle ground, where we stand and exist. I hope it encourages people to think about the responsibility we have to protect the land we stand on, and how our actions protect, hinder or damage nature.”
Connecting the Roots
Given its content, Jana Nicole’s artwork couldn’t be more perfect to support and raise awareness of Connecting the Roots and the work they are doing over in Costa Rica.
Costa Rica is a nation known for its biodiversity, but many of the country’s most important ecosystems have been destroyed to make room for cattle farming. Connecting the Roots is working hard to rewild the land, re-enrich the soul, and return native species to their natural habitats.
Via various fundraising initiatives, which include art auctions and sample sales, Enter Gallery has been able to support Connecting the Roots as they rewild the land and do vital work in the rural communities of the region. Speaking of her support of Connecting the Roots, Jana Nicole tells us:
“I really appreciate Enter Gallery being the platform that connects artists with Connecting the Roots, as the work they do is very close to my heart. I like that it’s an exchange, we give our art, and those that buy it support an important cause doing such valuable work.”
Jana Nicole’s postcard is available for just £12 as an add-on for online purchases. All proceeds go to Connecting the Roots.
