Helene Boyer - Australia

7.5 x 5.75 x 5.75     This sculpture was created from lampworked & blown borosilicate and soda lime glass, glass paints, pate de verre, airdry clay, cold assembled and enclosed in its found glass presentation box. Fungi represented are Marasmius elegans (velvet parachute), Coprinus sp (non inky inkcap or fairy inkcap), Ramaria lorithamnus (Yellow tufted coral fungi) and Urnula-campylospora (cup fungi) plus Ceratiomyxa fruticulosa (a slime mould) amongst the leaf litter (eucalyptus bark, dead ferns and leaves) of a Tasmanian forest. The most numerous but often least noticed creatures in the forest are the recyclers - exotic and beautiful fungi and slime moulds are nature's recyclers, feeding on the decomposing vegetation on the forest floor, breaking down the detritus to nourish new growth and continuing the cycle of life in the forest environment.

My self-taught practice is grounded in the fact that I am Tasmanian, a proud resident of a sparsely populated heart-shaped island at the bottom of the world with unique and precious natural beauty. I am committed to celebrating the "smaller things" and their complexity and vulnerable beauty is usually ‘captured’ under glass like the scientific displays of past centuries; if we do not act on the challenges of climate change, many botanicals and the creatures that live alongside them may become rare specimens found only in scientific collections.