OCT 04
FEAST III:
Foto Fungal Futurism
CPW – Kingston, NY
Saturday, October 4, 2025
4:30-7:00 PM
Curated by Linda Weintraub
MENU
Foto Fungal Futurism envisions a new photographic movement distinguished by the regenerative and cooperative behaviors of fungi. This revolutionary update of traditional picture-making techniques and philosophies will be explored by invited participants and guests. The interactive event will be conducted in four acts.
Act 1: FUNGAL PHOTO SHOOT
Attendees are invited to bring their cameras to shoot mushroom-themed still-lifes created by the distinguished contributors.
Act 2: CPW: FEAST I, II, III?
Introduction by CPW Director, Brian Wallis.
Act 3: FUNGAL THINK TANK
A photographer, a mycologist, a chef, and a designer convene to explore “Foto Fungal Futurism.” Their conversation evolves in the manner of a mycelia network, which may generate a “mushroom bloom” of nourishing new concepts. They consider, “Are fungi’s unique abilities to stabilize climates, manage wastes, and provide nourishment also applicable to photography as creative medium, communication tool, and material process?” This unscripted idea exchange is visualized graphically as the event unfolds by the initiators of FEAST, the artists Ellen Levy and Victoria Vesna.
Act 4: FUNGAL HORS D’OEUVRES
Appetizers consisting of four different kinds of freshly foraged mushrooms are served, along with Amasaka, a nonalcoholic mushroom beverage that is sweet but not fermented.
Participants include Linda Weintraub, eco artist/author; Brian Wallis, CPW Director; Andrea Frank Director of the Photography (SUNY New Paltz); Luke Sarrantonio mushroom specialist; Peter Barrett culinary fermentation expert; and Iain Kerr ecologist/artist/designer; Ellen Levy and Victoria Vesna artists and initiators of the FEAST initiative.
VIDEOS
PHOTOS
SHORTS
Andrea Frank
Luke Sarrantonio
Iain Kerr
Linda Weintraub
Peter Barrett
CURATOR
Linda Weintraub
Linda Weintraub is a curator, educator, artist, and author of several popular books about contemporary art. She makes the outposts of vanguard art accessible to broad audiences. The current vanguard, she believes, is propelled by environmental consciousness that is delineating contemporary art. Weintraub’s books exploring contemporary art and ecology include WHAT’s NEXT? Eco Materialism & Contemporary Art (2018) and To LIFE! Eco Art in Pursuit of a Sustainable Planet (2012). She was director of the Edith C. Blum Art Institute at Bard College where she toured many of the fifty exhibitions she curated and published over twenty catalogues. Weintraub was the Henry Luce Professor of Emerging Arts at Oberlin College. Her curated exhibitions include Dear Mother Nature, Lo and Behold: Visionary Art in the Post-Modern Era, Process and Product: The Making of Eight Contemporary Masterworks, Landmarks: New Site Proposals by Twenty Pioneers of Environmental Art, and Art What Thou Eat: Images of Food in American Art. Weintraub has exhibited her own work at such venues as the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan.
FEAST II
PARTICIPANTS
Andrea Frank
Andrea Frank is Full Professor of Photography at SUNY New Paltz. In her artistic practice, Andrea Frank explores complexity and collective psychological resonances through photography and related media. She embraces collaborative embodied processes as creative tool toward an emergent regenerative culture. She holds workshops, collaborates, and exhibits her work internationally. Recent publications include LOSSY: Toward a Sensory Ecology (Aracne Editrice, Italy, 2020); Beloved Child: The War Book (Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, NY, 2020); and SEED (2023). She holds Diplom and Staatsexamen degrees from the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, Germany, and an MFA from Parsons in NYC, where she also attended the Whitney ISP. From 2003-12 she was a lecturer at the MIT ACT Program in Cambridge, MA. She is a Professor of Photography at SUNY New Paltz.
Peter Barrett
Peter Barrett is widely recognized for his expertise in fermentation. He has been a frequent guest on WAMC’s Food Friday program. Peter is working on his third book, a collaboration with a 3-star chef. He writes regularly for magazines and his own newsletters Things on Bread and Flavor Freaks. Peter’s horticulture and gastronomy skills will coalesce in the form of hors d’oeuvres he prepares with wild mushrooms he forages that he will serve with amazake, a sweet fermented rice drink.
Luke Sarrantonio
Luke Sarrantonio is a mushroom educator and founder of Mycophilic, dedicated to creating functional mushroom products and cultivating outdoor edible mushrooms on his farm in Accord, NY. He organizes “For the Love of Fungi,” an annual mushroom & arts festival in the Catskill Region; the “Eat More Mushrooms” community project; and consults for outdoor mushroom farms. Sarrantonio earned a degree in Forest Biology at SUNY’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse.
Iain Kerr
Iain Kerr is a professor and designer working at the intersection of creativity, ecology, and emergent systems to make novel worlds possible. His innovative problem-solving approaches have evolved over twenty years of exploration across and beyond the zones of architecture, design, ecology, art, creativity studies, ethnobotany, food studies, systems thinking, social entrepreneurship, commons studies, and philosophy. His work focuses on designing collective creative processes that transform seemingly intractable challenges into problems worth having. Iain is the Co-Director of the MIX Lab at Montclair State University and a member of the SPURSE art collective. In 2021, he published Innovating Emergent Futures: The Innovation Design Approach for Change and Worldmaking.