Listening to Art, by William Denton.
Volume twelve, number four: Perpetuity of the Shelf Fungus by Asha Cabaca.
Hello, and welcome to Listening to Art. I’m William Denton.
In the first eleven volumes of Listening to Art we heard 132 different recordings. Of these, 121 were made inside and eleven outside. In this issue we revisit one of those eleven: Perpetuity of the Shelf Fungus by Asha Cabaca, which we first heard in volume nine number nine and later in volume eleven number two (which we will hear again). In both issues I quoted from her artist statement:
My work is centered around the objects I find in nature. I am drawn toward the environments that surround me: the parks and trails around my home, and the forests and countryside of rural Ontario. In my work, the acts of finding and discovering are crucial. The found object, be it an apple, chestnut, or mushroom, is transformed into stone, bronze, or plaster. As an object maker, I create valuable objects out of things that are considered worthless and useless by many. A wrinkly wild apple is worthless, an overgrown shelf mushroom is useless, a fallen horse chestnut is something to be ignored. By recreating these objects in sculpture, I tread the thin line between the natural and human-made, between the worthless and valuable. The true nature of these objects must be discovered by the viewer. The viewer must discern whether they are real or created by human hands.
This is a sculpture, hydrostone plaster stained with leaves, 13.3 cm wide by 3.2 cm high by 8 cm deep.
Now let’s listen to Perpetuity of the Shelf Fungus by Asha Cabaca, recorded at a private collection, on Stony Lake, Ontario, on 22 May 2022.
That was Perpetuity of the Shelf Fungus by Asha Cabaca. I hope you enjoyed listening to it as much as I did.
For more information and links to things I’ve mentioned, please visit listeningtoart.org.
Listening to Art is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Bibliography
All web sites accessed as of date of publication.
Cabaca, Asha. “Arist Statement.” Asha Cabaca. https://ashacabaca.com/statement.
⸻. “Perpetuity of the Shelf Fungus.” Asha Cabaca. https://www.ashacabaca.ca/perpetuity-of-the-shelf-fungus/.
Denton, William. “Asha Cabaca, Perpetuity of the Shelf Fungus.” Listening to Art 09, no. 09 (13 September 2021). https://listeningtoart.org/09.09/.
⸻. “Asha Cabaca, Perpetuity of the Shelf Fungus.” Listening to Art 11, no. 02 (01 June 2022). https://listeningtoart.org/12.02/.