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[ ♪♪♪ ] WOMAN: All right, action!

I love using the medium of filmmaking to feature my costumes.

They really just come to life when they're in motion.

WOMAN: When I made my first Cheez-It bag, people went crazy for it.

I think I might've found something.

Look at all that color down in there.

See that yellowy orange?

I love making color from mushrooms.

And it's as simple as steeping a cup of tea.

Oh, goody!

Look at the regium.

Oh, my God, we're getting pink!

I've never gotten pink.

[ ♪♪♪ ] WOMAN: Water, it's just been such a source of inspiration.

Being in the water helps to relax my mind... and think of creative ideas.

Whenever I have a creative puzzle and I feel like I'm sort of stuck, going swimming really helps.

My name is Fuchsia Lin.

I'm an artist, costume designer, fashion designer, and filmmaker.

I'm always pushing to break outside the box, and so when this musician, Zairah, and Wieden and Kennedy approached me to design and fabricate this gender non-conforming quinceanera dress, I just thought, "This is the perfect project for me.

Just bring it on!"

I really loved creating this cape structure, which was meant to resemble a typical silhouette of a quinceanera dress, and then inside of the cape, I designed this hot pink bullfighter suit.

And for Zairah, it had a lot of symbolism.

It just had this, like, toughness to it, but it's in hot pink, and I could really relate to that, because when I was a kid growing up, I really struggled with the expectations of my culture.

[ ♪♪♪ ] Expectations of what a little girl should wear and what a little girl should be like.

I was this shy kid, and I felt very isolated at school because my family had just emigrated from Taiwan, and we were one of two Asian families in the whole town.

Art was really my companion.

I loved drawing and painting.

We were really pushed very hard to choose a profession such as law, medicine, or engineering.

It was just a struggle for me to defy my parents' expectations in order to pursue my own dreams.

I just realized how empowering it was for me to learn how to sew so that I could create this identity that I was really struggling to find.

So because of that, I decided that I wanted to become a fashion designer.

[ ♪♪♪ ] After college, I attended Parsons School of Design in New York City.

It's one of the best design schools in the country.

But after a few years, I realized that designing garments that would be mass-produced wasn't really what I was dreaming of doing.

I began working at a costume fabrication studio.

[ singing opera ] I made costumes for "Phantom of the Opera," "The Lion King," "The Little Mermaid," and many other Broadway shows.

I started to feel burned out on New York City, and that's when I decided to move to Portland in 2007.

[ ♪♪♪ ] Recently, I was commissioned to create 12 costumes for the Oregon Ballet Theatre.

They wanted to have pedestrian-inspired costumes, basically, like, this streetwear look, the no-costume look.

When I was first approached, I didn't think that this was going to be the right project for me because my costume work is fantastical and otherworldly and extravagant.

I've worked with many of the dancers for several years now, and they're really my muse.

All right, ready for Charlotte.

I take into consideration their style, their personal preferences, what their body shape is.

Yeah, that's great!

More than half of the designs in the performance are jumpsuits, which is very unexpected for ballet, because in the world of ballet, you usually see leotards and tutus and tights.

[ ♪♪♪ ] And I'm really, really glad that I did work on this project, because it was such a cool collaboration.

I was really proud of seeing my designs on the stage.

[ ♪♪♪ ] I had to crowdfund to raise the money to make my first film, but a few years later, I finally completed my short film.

It went on to win me a scholarship award to study fashion filmmaking at the London College of Fashion.

I love having all this detail in my work, because that's what really makes it special and beautiful.

I just love seeing my costumes in motion in performances and in film.

They really just come to life when they're in motion.

Oh, my gosh!

Wow!

"Future Cosmos Flow" is the second film in my film trilogy.

It's inspired by mythology, it's, like, water versus fire.

Okay, we have to start shooting really soon.

It's this magical fairy tale that really relates to climate change.

All right, action!

Okay, stop and look to the left.

Okay, poof out your cape.

Okay, good.

We should keep going.

I love using the medium of filmmaking to feature my costumes.

[ ♪♪♪ ] I began "Future Cosmos Flow" in 2014, and my father had just passed away.

I was just beginning to process this loss.

I felt like this block of ice that was cracking and it was beginning to melt.

I really wanted to create this film to inspire people to feel a sense of hope for our future.

I wanted people to feel emotions and like they had some kind of magical experience through my art.

[ ♪♪♪ ] Well, we are heading up into the Gifford Pinchot National Forest with the hopes that we'll find a variety of different mushrooms.

So this is a really cool spot right up here.

Okay, Pahto.

Good boy.

I have always had a real interest in mushrooms, and as a young kid, was very curious about them.

There was this moment in time where I was out hiking, and all the mushrooms were just fruiting, and it was like I was following the Yellow Brick Road of mushrooms.

And it just really inspired me, and down the rabbit hole I went, and I've never come back out.

Come on, Pahto.

So when we think about the fungi kingdom, we're thinking about this incredible interconnected network underground in the soil that help keep forests healthy.

We're walking everywhere we're going, and we're not considering what is down below to enable what we see above.

And it's just a whole, you know, amazing kaleidoscopic world underneath.

And out of that fruits these mushrooms, and some of these mushrooms are filled with pigment that we can coax the color out of to dye fiber and fabric as well as make a variety of paints and inks.

I think I might've found something.

So this is admirable bolete, auroreoboletus mirabilis.

And look at all that color down in there.

See that yellowy orange?

And in these tubes, that's where all the color is located.

Pahto, let's go.

Good boy.

[ ♪♪♪ ] There has been a history of using mushrooms for dye back to at least the 15th century, and we're really lucky here in the Pacific Northwest, because it is truly a mushroom paradise.

Oh!

Okay.

This is awesome.

What we've found here is a pycnoporellus and it is a dye mushroom, and it likes to grow on logs, often with snow.

And you can see here it's full of color, and it's just quite a beautiful mushroom.

Mushrooms come in all shapes, sizes, and colors.

We think of kind of the classic mushroom with a cap and gills under it, but some of these mushrooms even have what we call teeth.

Oh, wow!

Look at this!

We've found hydnellum regium.

This mushroom is a tooth fungi.

Its common name up in Alaska is "bear poop."

And it happens to be near elk poop.

[ laughs ] So this mushroom produces a beautiful deep, dark black blue-green.

And when we turn it over, look at the beautiful spores, these little teeth.

So we can definitely take this home and cook it up.

[ ♪♪♪ ] I love making color from mushrooms, and it's as simple as steeping a cup of tea.

I created the Mushroom Color Atlas, which documents, at its current form, about 30 mushrooms and all the colors that are derived from them.

And it's a resource and reference for people curious about color that comes from mushrooms and the palette from the fungi kingdom.

So here we have pycnoporellus, one of the mushrooms we found.

It's the first time I've experimented with this, and we're going to add it to the Mushroom Color Atlas.

It's dry, but I'm going to go ahead and grind this mushroom up.

All right.

And now I'm going to add it to some water.

So now this is ready to go be cooked for about an hour.

[ ♪♪♪ ] Look at all that colorful liquid.

I have nine different fabric swatches to get a range of colors.

And they will all take up the color a little bit differently.

We'll put them back on the burner for about another hour and use the heat to bond this color onto the fabric.

Then we'll pull them out and see what color we get.

All right.

So here we have all of the different swatches.

We can see already we're getting some really nice oranges.

This is the silk here, we've got wool and linen, all revealing different shades of colors, all from the pycnoporellus mushroom.

Often I take that soluble dye bath that I've immersed something in and I transform it into a pigment.

And it's a really simple process for doing that where we're adding some basic minerals and capturing all the color in that dye bath.

We'll start to see that pigment gather and then separate.

Sometimes it can take hours to get all the pigment down to the bottom.

And once it has settled, we're going to strain it.

And once it dries, we've got this nice, solid pigment.

I'm going to add some gum arabic.

And I'm going to mull that.

And that will transform it into watercolor paint.

[ ♪♪♪ ] [ ♪♪♪ ] So in my work, I'm really interested in exploring the deep geological time and using these fibers and threads that have been imbued with the colors from the mushrooms.

This is part of a series looking and exploring the things that we can't see, the strata, the geological soil, and the formations that are underground and how that has impacted what we see above.

For me, the fungi kingdom covers both of those realms.

And so I love being able to bring that together into a piece.

I'm creating a lot of this and using it in my pieces, and then I'm also teaching different workshops to anyone who wonders about the fungi kingdom through creativity, color, design, and art.

Tonight you're going to make a mushroom color chart.

This is a blue chanterelle, and they make blue-greens.

Teaching these workshops is really, really rewarding because you get so many different people that are coming at this from different perspectives...

I am initially into mushrooms from the culinary aspect.

...but they are all gathering around this curiosity of mushrooms.

I'm going to shock some of you.

I don't like mushrooms.

And I've tried really hard.

JULIE: You're allowed to be hot and sloppy.

I'm low and slow, so, you know... [ indistinct conversations ] Oh, goody.

Look at the regium.

Oh, my God, we're getting pink!

I've never gotten pink.

Okay.

[ blows ] Oh, yeah!

JULIE: You can see them start to have this magical, like, smile and enthusiasm for this world that they are now starting to learn so much more about.

So that is always rewarding.

[ camera shutter clicks ] [ ♪♪♪ ] And then, of course, my goal is that they take some time, they go out in the forest, learn the science side.

Look at this little suillus.

They learn the mycology, they learn the identification and so forth, to kind of further the work that they're doing.

It's not a dye mushroom... but it's a happy mushroom.

[ ♪♪♪ ] I've discovered, in making this work, that we all have these nostalgic connections to certain brands or certain foods, and they're connected to very deep, very real memories.

I don't think of my work as an advertisement to go out and eat more candy bars, but there is a way that it validates and acknowledges the real pleasure of these products in our lives.

I'm Lebrie Rich, and I make felt sculpture.

When I want to make new work, it usually starts with a trip to the grocery store or to a convenience store to just kind of walk the aisles and see what catches my eye.

But then also I'm kind of searching for some emotional resonance or what does this product mean to me or mean to us as a culture.

So I'm always on the lookout for new products that I haven't made before, and I found this box of saltine crackers.

And it's just kind of a classic American product.

After I buy a product, I take the packaging and I carefully unwrap it.

And then I photocopy it and I create a stencil out of it.

I use an X-Acto knife and cut out the different letters or the different elements and then lay that onto my felt to start the felting process.

So the felting needle is just a little piece of steel.

It's a little tool, and it has a triangular tip.

And then at the end of the tip, it has these little barbs.

When you stab it into the wool, it mats the fibers together.

So it's just about stabbing.

That's what I do.

[ laughs ] What's fun about making this work is that each piece is like a little puzzle.

There's blue on top of white on top of yellow.

How am I going to pull that off with the materials restrictions that I have with using wool felt?

What is interesting about these is that they're look-alikes, so you look at it, and then you have to double take.

And it's that moment, you know, that is exciting for people.

[ ♪♪♪ ] A favorite that I did was this Donette bag.

And that one was fun because I actually cut a window in it so you could see inside of the bag and see felt versions of the product.

Making these vegetables takes a lot of detail work to have the shadows look legible.

And even this fork took a lot of work because it's a shiny object, and so to try and figure out how to make a shiny object be readable in felt, which is a non-shiny material is pretty tricky.

I'd never made work before where people came up to me and they were like, "You have to make Honey Grahams!"

[ laughs ] Like, people have such strong feelings about treats.

I think these products are so powerful to us because we have spent, like, millions of human hours trying to make the F a little longer on Frito, whatever, to sell another hundred, another thousand units.

If you think about the candy aisle, it's totally overstimulating.

So these products are all competing with each other to get our 59-cent purchase.

And so I think that all the human hours invested in this packaging really is compelling to us, because it works.

[ ♪♪♪ ] This work is really about products that are ubiquitous.

I think this work also speaks to the scale that these products are made at.

Start to make it look like the real thing.

And that's so in contrast to this little totem that took weeks and weeks to make.

So right now I'm working on the nutrition facts.

I don't do every word on the nutrition facts.

I couldn't do that in felt.

But also I feel like the calories, the saturated fat, the sodium, are we really reading that?

I don't think so.

So there's something about having the title of the nutrition facts there, but then everything else is kind of blurred out that I feel like is sort of accurate to how I actually interact with the package when I'm snacking.

Some people have come up to me at a show and said, "I ate four of these things in the last week."

And then the next person comes up to me and says, like, "I haven't eaten any of these things in 20 years."

Unless you grew up in a cave, we all have a connection with all of these products.

Open your box.

And I think the best thing to do-- -Oh, I see in there.

-Yeah.

[ laughs] One of the things I'm teaching now is felted pizza.

Yeah, so there's a menu.

Wow, on the menu!

It's like a collision of my interests, teaching the community felt-making and then felted food.

We're going to sculpt this crust, and then we're going to add the color over the top.

And so the way that works is I teach people how to make the crust and the sauce and make it look realistic, and then they get to choose whatever toppings they want.

So each slice is totally unique, and people get to make their favorite food.

It's really fun.

This is the most delicate pepperoni in the world.

[ ♪♪♪ ] I guess the most satisfying moment when I'm making a piece is when I take the two-dimensional felt I've been felting on and I wrap it in three dimensions around the form.

And that's kind of the moment where the product comes alive, because it goes from an image of the product and it starts to become the thing itself, and that's really exciting.

What I've found with this work that's so rewarding is people's reaction to it.

When I made my first Cheez-It bag, people went crazy for it.

Something about them opened up a little bit, and then the next time that they go to the grocery store, there's like a memory of this artwork that happened.

To me, that's what it's about.

It's about people being in the world just a little bit more present after encountering this artwork.

[ ♪♪♪ ] To see more stories about Oregon artists, visit our website... And for a look at what we're working on now, follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

Support for Oregon Art Beat is provided by... and OPB members and viewers like you.